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THE REAL BOY 
And the New Schood 





ERY OF PRINE 
Kon EP > 
OWS NOADO 
















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COPYRIGHT 1925 cos BY 
BONI @& LIVERIGHT, Ine. 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 
—— 9 


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First printing, August, 1925 
Second printing, January, 1926 
Third printing, November, 1926 


To 
KATHARINE 


WHOSE FIRESIDE WAS HOME 
AND FRIENDSHIP AND JOY 
TO MANY A LONELY KID. 


4 ‘wh , Hy 
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Oe Wa) Shion “ i ante 1p 


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CHAPTER 


ie 
|W 
DEY 
IV. 
V. 


XVII. 


CONTENTS 


Pro—EM—On Wuy aA TEACHER SHOULD 
WRITE A Book . 

SUNDAY SCHOOL LEssons AT WorkK 

THe Major Toucues Our HEartTs 

Anpb Leap Us Into TEMPTATION 

A GREAT TEACHER WELCOMES ME . 


SoME Boy THoucHts ABpoutT ‘THEIR 
‘TEACHERS 


. WE EXpERIMENT Wi1TH DEMOCRACY 


. A Lay ConrFESSIONAL 


Nat WarrEN ReEaps NIETZSCHE 


. ON THE Way oF Boys witH Books 

. ON THE Way oF Boys WITH POETRY 

. A TEACHER Is HELPED By A WIFE 

. A Few Worps on History 

. Boy RELIGION IN THE MAKING . 

. A SHort ExpERIMENT IN CoORDINATION 
. THe Woop Spirit Catits Us Away 


. On THE RELATION OF Camp TO HOME AND 


SCHOOL 


MytAruMNi DALK: ABOUTOLABRRA tel! celtite 


XVIII. Wuat, THEN, ABouT GirLs? . 


PAGE 


343 
363 
377 


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BSS} i NR 


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Wikseaernien oi | 


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—PROEM— 


ON WHY A TEACHER SHOULD WRITE A 
BOOK 


If you have built castles in the air your work need 
not be lost; that is where they should be. Now 
put the foundations under them. 

—THOREAU. 


I 


GALLOPING up a country road with a bunch of 
boys on horseback, I rose in my stirrups, turned 
around, waved an arm and shouted hello to a group 
of lads who stood aside to let the cavalcade go by. 
Suddenly the world turned black as a cave, then 
sparkled with stars, and vanished. I opened my 
eyes in a white hospital and was told that my skull 
had been fractured, that it must be trepanned and 
that my summer camping was over. Some months 
later I was set at liberty, told to go to Bermuda or 
the Mediterranean, forget about boys and do no 
work for a year or so. In response to these instruc- 
tions | moved onto a small island in the Andro- 
scoggin River, up in Maine, set my typewriter be- 
side a sunny window and began to write a book about 

II 


12 THE ReBeAG BiOwY 


boys. It is my hope that this very personal sketch 
of one teacher’s partial success and larger failure to 
square some of the ideals of the school of tomorrow 
with the hard academic facts of education today 
will add, as it were, a small stone to the foundation 
work of the structure that is being reared in America 
for the joyous growth of our boys and girls. 

I say joyous growth because, if education is not 
for the joy of growing up through life, like a tree, 
to our fullest breadth and stature as creatures 
capable of happiness and hungry for it, then I am 
all wrong, and this book should not have been writ- 
ten. If education is for mere usefulness, agility in 
earning a living, efficiency in squaring with practical 
life, success in competitive endeavor; then I would 
leave it to our correspondence schools, our vocational 
guidance departments, and the extensively ramifying 
system of industrial education. Not that I belittle 
any honest effort to fit a boy or girl for a trade or 
profession in life. I am simply interested in educa- 
tion that goes beyond the training of body and mind 
for their jobs in life. I am interested in the educa- 
tion of the soul. 

Permit me to use the word soul in this book. I 
am somewhat informed concerning the latest discoy- 
eries and vocabulary of our psychological labora- 
tories. J know that to many the word soul has 
become an anachronism, like the word phlogiston in 
chemistry, or humor in medicine. Yet despite the 
way the soul has been dissected, analyzed, micro- 


in hitioe Ra beAlT BE Ory 13 


analyzed, labeled and catalogued into its component 
parts, it still means to me as much as it ever did. It 
seems to me an immortal little word, like God and 
Spirit. Immortal words not for some mystic or 
transcendental reason, but because their meanings 
are plastic, resilient, subject to evolution and amen- 
able to a thousand changes in time and circumstance 
and place. I shall make no attempt to define them. 
I shall use them because, however conversant with 
the latest philosophies and texts psychological, I 
believe you will know what I mean. For I use them 
not philosophically, or theologically, but merely as 
good counters, still fitting to the life of boys and 
girls. 

If I were to choose a text, like the preachers, for 
what I have to say on education, I should borrow 
it from the scripture of a great and still somewhat 
misunderstood American who said that 


Happiness is the only good. 

The time to be happy is now. 

The place to be happy is here. 

The way to be happy is to make other people so. 


If the school of tomorrow can teach us something 
of how to realize the substance of this little 
text, if we could turn its feeling into habits of action 
as well as convictions of mind, would our world not 
be a place more cheery to live in? 

Will you now take your rainproof coat, good 
shoes, and a staff cut from the woods and, afoot and 


14 LEE wu RATE ARTS 1 BiG ey? 


light-hearted, take with me to the open road, the 
long brown path before us leading to the kingdom 
of heaven? For J take it that Jesus was right when 
he said that the kingdom of heaven was made of 
and for children. I feel, in writing this book, 
like gray Walt Whitman, that I have no chair, no 
church, no philosophy and only a desire to lead you, 
if you will, upon some knolls my feet have tramped 
in the land of growing boys and girls in search of an 
answer to the question: What, then, is education 
for? 
II 


I sent the manuscript of this book to one of my 
old teachers, a guide and friend of my academic 
days, Professor William H. Burnham, of Clark 
University. He returned it with some words which 
made me think that writing it had been worth while: 


‘Modern studies have shown how little we under- 
stand children, especially boys perhaps in their early 
years. [he world of the boy is protected by instinc- 
tive defense mechanisms and a shell of boyhood con- 
ventions. ‘To carry out the simile at the risk of 
_ mixing metaphors, we may say that the real world of 
boyhood lies within this shell. Once in a while adults 
who are fortunate crack the shell here and there and 
get glimpses that suggest the world of boy life 
within. Occasionally some special student of child- 
hood has actually broken a little hole here and there 
and seen still more of the life inside. 

‘You have been far more fortunate. You have 
actually penetrated this world so carefully protected, 


THE REAL BOY 15 


placed your camera inside the shell and taken snap- 
shots of actual boy nature, photographed reality on 
the spot. Your book gives us a series of these photo- 
graphs, and as a collection they furnish not only 
objects of natural interest to all those responsible 
for boys, but opportunity for study and pregnant 
suggestions of what could be done if we really under- 
stood them. What you have called ‘wild boys’ are 
real boys, and those who prefer reality to the arti- 
ficial pictures based on the usual conventions will 
find a rich mine here.” 


Perhaps rather than photographing, I have 
sketched a series of psycho-graphs of some boys and 
of their teachers, just as I met and lived with them 
for a while. To these I have added only what my 
heart spoke to me at the time and a few comments 
suggested by the perspective that has come to me 
years later when looking over some of these pleasant 
pictures of memory. I wish these pictures to speak 
for themselves whenever they can. If they illustrate 
an educational principle or doctrine, that should be 
apparent, for I do not think there is anything theo- 
retically new in this book. I am merely trying to 
voice some of the joy there is to a teacher in being 
what he is, a teacher of children, and to show where 
this inward reward and over-compensation for all 
one’s efforts and occasional sacrifices has its roots. 

As a teacher I have been fascinated by the num- 
ber and variety of responses one is called upon to 
make toward the individuals in a group of pupils. 
So many registers, so many philosophies or ways of 


16 TELE RE Ah BO Y¥ 


life to consider! The bright, peppery, alert fellows; 
one must react to them in their own language, at 
their own speed. ‘The slow, sure, ploddy ones who 
always get their lessons but never see a point you try 
to make until next day, or even next week if they 
ever see it at all. The bright-minded lazy ones, grow- 
ing too fast, unwilling to work when success comes so 
easily with little labor, thinking a task completed 
when it is only half done, trying always to pass 
muster on native intelligence and inherent ability; 
one has to battle with their nimble wits and out- 
maneuver their long deployings into juvenile logic. 
The dull, stupid, high-grade morons; generous, re- 
sponsive, lovable fellows utterly devoid of construc- 
tive intelligence; one marks time with them and 
must be satisfied if they merely learn to keep step 
and keep smiling. To deal with all these types in a 
group, yet always to think of the individual; to teach 
classes but remember that you are dealing with a 
boy, and not with an average; this is a constant test 
of one’s plasticity, resilience, adjustability, youth. [ 
believe that, as a teacher, I skipped among these 
boys without rule or formula, and trusting only to a 
few fundamental principles which had somehow 
become organic within me, and which I could not 
have set down in words if I had tried, at the time. 
Some of these principles are-now shadowily apparent 
to me, and in writing of them they have begun to 
take form; but always they seem to elude capture, 
Save as suggestions here and there. Sometimes 





tee: CREAT iB Ory 17 


these are crisp and clear, but mostly they are evasive 
and slippery, like quick minnows, ever so tempting 
in a brook to the hand of a covetous boy. Would 
that I might catch them, string them and show them 
to you proudly in the sunlight; but then, if I could, 
I should have written quite another sort of book. I 
should have talked about my boys much more than [ 
have here tried to let them talk about themselves. 
And as to the education of boys, I have read hun- 
dreds of definitions, and of course, writing a book, I 
must attempt to add yet another to the generous 
list. Like one’s concept of God or Spirit or Soul, 
the idea of what education is for must remain plastic, 
evolving, and adjusting itself to circumstance and 
time. From my own experience, education is for an 
adventure in the fine art of living at one’s very hap- 
piest and best this very day, this very hour. Looking 
at my boys at their work or play, I have come to ask 
myself: “Is that child before me with a book, or 
trap, or pencil, or test-tube, or gun, or puzzle 
actually living this very minute as nearly up to the 
limit of his capacity for intensive joy as he possibly 
can?’ If he is, then he is being truly educated, 
(drawn-out) by that book, or trap, or pencil, or 
test-tube, or puzzle, or gun, according to my own 
pet definition. And as for merely learning things, I 
like what Samuel Butler has to say in that ponderous 
masterpiece, The Way of All Flesh where he tells 
us: ‘Never learn anything until you find you have 
been made uncomfortable for a long time by not 


18 aR AL Ouy 


knowing it. Until then, spend your time growing 
bone and muscle.” ‘That, I know, is too broad a 
statement. I think we ought to feel uncomfortably 
ignorant, or consciously hungry for knowledge before 
going after it; but I see no reason for being uncom. 
fortable or hungry very long before starting out, 
It has been my principle, however, to try to get 
boys hungry and thirsty for knowledge before bring- 
ing it to them or sending them after it. Corollary 
to this I have tried to be ready to feed them savory 
and wholesome food when they have sprung upon 
me with a hungry question. If I had not the food 
at hand, I could at least point to a road, or a trail, 
or a track leading in its direction. Sometimes I 
thought it better to do this even when good things 
were on my table, steaming hot. 


Til 


If what I have to say has a pattern, this has 
evolved while I have been writing. The narrative 
has given it form, and so it rings true to life as it is, 
somewhat sketchy and full of holes. As I look back 
over it, the pattern is something like this: 

The boy, trying to adjust to school and to the 
ways of adults, only partially succeeds. ‘The school 
has not evolved from his own inner needs and wishes. 
Rather it has been thrust upon him, supposedly for 
his best interests, from without. ‘The boy, trying 
to adjust to the gang, succeeds almost immediately. 
The gang expresses its composite mind in strict ac- 


tea Ra ATES IBIOLY 19 


cord with the progressive points of development in 
the minds of its members. It evolves along with 
them, adjusts itself to their inward changes and dis- 
appears as naturally as it began. It is a rough 
working model of what the school should be: an 
opportunity to learn about life by doing intensively 
those things which we most want to do at a particu- 
lar moment of living. ‘This may seem far from ap- 
parent in the first chapter. None of us will agree 
that, because a group of boys desire to become 
bandits, the school should provide opportunity for 
their education in banditry. I believe, however, that 
what I really mean will become clear in later chap- 
ters. 

So, too, with fear. I do not believe that anyone 
but an ardent fundamentalist would suggest that we 
adopt in our schools such a fear of the Lord as was 
the beginning of wisdom to my gang. Yet learning 
to fear aright must long remain one of the founda- 
tion stones of educational psychology. ‘The fear of 
ghosts is vanishing, even from boyhood. The fear 
of germs may follow it, when science shall have de- 
stroyed their power. But while there are evils, in- 
dividual and social in the world, this primordial in- 
stinct may healthfully remain with us, as a friendly 
warning signal like pain in a tooth, even if no longer 
as an important motive for action. 

William James and, following him, Bergson and 
Dewey, have brought instinctive feeling before us as 
more important in education than intellect or will, 


20 UE ee Aes Gey 


and fundamental to both. To reach a boy’s head we 
must speak to his heart first, for what the heart 
feels, the head will later understand. ‘The artistry 
underlying a consistent practice of this principle is 
one of the theme-threads in my pattern of thought 
through this book. Its technique, it seems to me, is 
almost vital to good craftsmanship in teacherhood. 

The art of making wholesome, constructive, crea- 
tive things so strongly alluring that they draw one 
to them, and away from things less healthy, is an- 
other lesson we teachers must learn. ‘That this is 
possible and practical as well as ideal in principle 
has been amply proved already. All I have done is 
to set down some of my own joy in experiencing it 
at work. 

The perennial conflict between the desires of youth 
and the fears of adults concerning their relationship 
to youth has been most apparent to me in the fields 
of democracy and of sex. We are organically as 
conservative in regard to granting administrative or 
governmental powers to the youth in our care as the 
dynasties of kingdoms and empires have been all 
through history in relation to their subjects. Yet 
my experience among principals and teachers makes 
me think that we fear less the loss of our own power 
than the loss of the relatively facile ease with which 
we can control our pupils in the good old-fashioned 
way. We fear change because it means readjust- 
ment, patience and real labor if we are to guide the 
change constructively. We are lazy, and tradition, 


HE REAL. BOW 21 


precedent, routine are such easy hammocks in which 
to lie! 

With sex there is this difference: that we adults 
are not sufficiently alive and receptive to the obvious 
facts in the moral atmosphere around us. Nor do 
we notice that the moral atmosphere, as concerned 
with sex, is changing quite radically from fog to 
sunlight. I do not say changing quickly, but radi- 
cally. My conviction does not come from what I 
read in print or hear in lectures, but what I am 
told by boys and girls and by young men and young 
women just graduating from boyhood and girlhood. 
We grown-ups fear this change not because we shall 
lose power or prestige or ease of living; but simply 
because we do not understand what is happening, and 
the fear of the unknown is upon us. Consequently, 
sex remains still a no-man’s land in education. 

I have made a few sorties into this no-man’s land 
and tried to battle there with what poor weapons | 
had against the insidious and grotesque mystery with 
which sex has been so monstrously surrounded. 
Armed with a handful of facts gathered from ex- 
perience, and with a few convictions resultant there- 
from, I have found myself face to face with a mil- 
lion fancies, superstitions, convictions, idealizations, 
cynicisms and interrogations which have driven me 
back time and time again into the seclusion of a 
solitary trench, or shell-hole as it were, in self- 
defense. 

I see no hope for constructive education in this 


22 THE (RABAT sBOsY 


field so long as a humiliating censorship in America 
can keep out of the hands of its teachers such books 
as Doctor Stopes has written, as Margaret Sanger 
and Havelock Ellis would write if they had promise 
of an adequate audience. In a country where the 
maudlin imbecilities of puritanic theologians are al- 
lowed to circulate as authoritative sources of infor- 
mation upon sex, and where a teacher cannot obtain 
a copy of “Sex in Relation to Society’’ unless he 
proves that he is a lawyer or an M.D., only one thing 
is possible: experiment. And if you wish to read a 
politely expurgated drawing-room sketch of some 
aspects of this experiment, read Ben Lindsey’s book 
on the morals of modern youth. 

What influence does reading have upon the per- 
sonal life of a boy? ‘This question returned to me 
again and again as I watched my pupils over their 
books, or when they came to me to borrow one 
of mine.- Difficult of answer, this. Attitude, 
viewpoint, inward feeling toward a book: that is 
what counts. Not what a boy learns from it, but 
what it makes him feel is the test of his reading. 
Some of my alumni read Judge Lindsey, and put 
their feeling into words. ‘That gave me a hint as 
to what such writing meant in the world. For I 
doubt if it has much effect upon many people over 
twenty-five years of age. It talks about them, but 
not to them. William James was all too right 
about the setting, like putty, of the human mind. 

And the classics? I hope I shall not be taken 


(ar RE ACE BOTY 23 


as a crank on the subject of college entrance require- 
ments in literature. Perhaps I have been peeved at 
the limitations they seem to set upon reading, and 
the waste of time they invoke on non-essentials. On 
the whole, however, they did not trouble me much 
as a teacher, or the boys as candidates for college. 
These requisites for examination were faced, mas- 
tered and forgotten as a necessary evil in one’s 
course through life. We read heaps of good books 
with pleasure and real profit despite all attempts to 
keep us in line with accepted standards. 

“Beyond good and evil’ have we gone today? A 
few of my boys read Nietzsche. Nat Warren quite 
worshiped him. More read Mencken, many more 
still have been swept, for a while, into the stream 
of thought in which Mencken swims so splashingly, 
and which constitutes a current which no one inter- 
ested in education can ignore. I speak here, of 
course, of the older lads and of my alumni. The 
younger fry, insofar as iconoclasm is concerned, were 
still back in the times of Colonel Ingersoll, as some 
of their religious speculations proved. 

If anything was apparent to me in the random 
comments of boy-mind upon God, Religion, Evolu- 
tion, Immortality and Death, it was that conceptions 
of the meaning of these words were plastic, and 
amenable to constant change. To Agpawan, my 
primitive pupil from the Philippines, life was indeed 
‘fan ever-living adventure in readjustment, a contin- 
uous participation with God in the creation of a 


24 THE REAL BOY 


better and better world.’ It seemed to me, dealing 
with mental stuff so flowing, so moldable, that the 
one cardinal impression to make upon it was that 
“our religion is still in the making, that it partakes of 
our faults, and that each generation of youths has 
the privilege of entering into it with free creativity.” 
I am grateful to Professor Coe for putting into 
words what I felt for so long a time when dealing 
with boys in groups or as individuals, on the subject 
of religion. 

History, it seemed to me, carried so much of the 
story of mankind in search for God, that one could 
almost take it as a text. History related us so often 
to the great Bibles of the world, and especially to 
that which we, as a people, have adopted officially 
as our own. History as a setting, as a vantage point 
for getting the present into perspective, and as a 
possible springboard into a happier future for man- 
kind, was my theme in dealing with this topic in 
school. Its heroes and villains seemed so graphic 
of relative moral values that the whole pageantry of 
life from the cave-men to Romain Rolland became a 
lesson at once philosophic and religious. But’I did 
not use these words in my approach to History with 
the boys! 

The architecture of our great cathedrals is a 
symbolic and beautifully imitative echo of tall trees, 
of vines and of flowers. To me these wonderful 
buildings are not so close akin to frozen music, as 
to crystallized woodland and petrified blossoms. So 


eri Win Role, Abe Oye 25 


that when I walked with my boys under beech and 
oak and pine, I often felt atavistic reverberations of 
the days when religion first began its evolution, and 
it was around the Council Fire at camp that the 
spirit of religion seemed most vitally alive. I be- 
lieve I was not alone in this feeling, and that many 
of the boys shared it with me. 

My alumni returned to me, here and there, for a 
chat about old times. I visited them in their homes. 
Always we seemed to wish to sit by a fire, and 
often we did. They brought me their problems of 
life in the world outside of school. Not their busi- 
ness, or profession, or politics; but their still evolving 
attitudes toward those things which are most per- 
sonal, and most important: love, marriage, children, 
the integration and success of family life, the life 
of the spirit. 

What is love? Is monogamy feasible? Where 
does chastity begin and end? What qualities will 
children inherit? Is experimental sex experience a 
constructive prelude to marriage? Are trial mar- 
riages a help or a hindrance toward successful set- 
tling down to a happy family life? Can the attitude 
of the scientist replace and fulfill the place of religion 
in one’s soul? ‘These are a few of the questions to 
which I must reply not with theory, or tradition, or 
dogma, but with conviction backed by experience and 
with facts. 

Youth today wants facts. It is ready for them. 
It wants them from one who speaks with authority 


26 THE REAL BOY 


and not as the scribes. What a position in which to 
place a teacher! What responsibility to bring upon 
his shoulders! How weakly one seems able to react 
to such pressure. We must do our level best, and 
hope that it may help; yet “living indeed is an art 
that everyone must learn but that none of us can 
teach.” Each one of our boys and girls is his own 
best teacher, and we of the cloth can do little more 
than stand beside him, like Mrs. Johnson of Fair- 
hope, ready to lend a hand in time of need. 

The relationship of a mature woman to the mind 
of a boy, especially that of a boy away from his 
family at boarding school, is full of possibilities for 
growth. The role of a partial foster-mother is here, 
as well as the art of the hostess. A word, or a sym- 
pathetic smile at the right moment may mark a turn- 
ing point in some creative line of thought or aspira- 
tion. I say creative because a boy is unconsciously, 
and at times quite consciously creating himself out 
of the constant flow of impressions to which he is 
exposed. It is the direction and guidance of these 
impressions when they begin to turn into attitudes 
and toward expression that is important. ‘The nod 
of a head or the shaking of a finger may make all 
the difference between better and best, if not between 
good and evil. 

In this book I have tried merely to set down a 
narrative of personal experience as a teacher. There 
is nothing new in educational theory here; but there 
is considerable testing of the old and of recent con- 


ras he A Pe BO) Ye 27 


ceptions in the field of educational psychology. 
While the facts of a teacher’s life have led me to 
meditate now and then, it is the facts themselves 
which I should like to have speak, and I hope that 
what they have to say will prove worth reading. 


CHAPTER I 
SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSONS AT WORK 


Men do not despise a thief, if he steals to satisfy 
his soul when he is hungry; but if he be found, he 
shall restore seven-fold; he shall give all the sub- 
stance of his house. 

—PROVERBS VI, 30-31. 


I 


My practical education for life began in the 
Thieves’ Market. Here I got my first inkling of 
economics, sociology and ethics. Here I learned 
how the religious teachings of Sunday school may 
apply to everyday life. This course in economics, 
sociology and applied religion began when I was 
eight years old. Its lessons have colored the thought 
and feeling of a checkered career in educational ex- 
periences for quarter of a century during which I 
have tried hard to find a satisfying answer to the 
question: What is education for? 

Almost within the shadow of the National Palace 
in Mexico City there lies an open square of sandal- 
worn cobblestones known politely as E/ Volador or 
flying market, practically as El Baratillo or cheap- 
place, and truthfully as the Plaza de Rateros or 
market for thieves. A miniature Bagdad, a ma- 


terialized chapter from the Arabian Nights, this 
28 


fier te As) iC). Yt 29 


market square became a magnet of perennial interest 
to us boys. Somewhat dull and deserted on week- 
days, on Sundays it became an animated kaleidoscope 
of humanity and of things. Things! a tired and 
threadbare word, but what a joyous word to early 
childhood. How the Baratillo teemed with things! 

Grinning Aztec idols; arrow-heads of flint, obsid- 
ian and quartz; flintlock pistols, caplock guns and 
pin-fire revolvers; army buttons, medals, chevrons, 
epaulets, gold braid; candlesticks, transits, micro- 
scopes, telescopes, daggers, poniards, swords mache- 
tes and small cannon; test-tubes, mortars, crucibles, 
retorts and electrical mysteries without number. 
Boyhood’s favorite pages from a Sears-Roebuck 
catalogue magically translated from print and pic- 
ture into seeable, feelable, smellable reality. I could 
fill pages from vivid memories of miscellaneous and 
fascinating junk. Let me add, because they bear 
intimately on my story, a string of amber beads, 
some miner’s picks, a roll of absorbent cotton and 
a bottle of glycerine. 

Feelable reality! We lifted brass duck-cannon to 
guess their weight. We felt the varying smoothness 
and roughness of arrow-heads, spear-points and 
chipped-stone knives. We discovered the delicate 
difference in balance-point of hatchets and pistols and 
guns. We looked through a score of good, bad and 
indifferent microscopes, telescopes and fieldglasses. 
Meerschaum and clay, pottery and stone, pumice 
and quartz, flexible steel and obdurate iron yielded 


30 TH bye Rav Ade TB ON 


up a portion of their specific mysteries to our inquisi- 
tive touch. 

Covetable reality! ‘For by way of the hand the 
mind travels the enticing road to self-expression and 
self-fulfilment, and to that most priceless sort of 
happiness which is poised upon itself.”” True, Mr. 
Yeomans, our boy-minds traveled from the delight- 
ful experience of looking at and feeling things to 
the desire for self-fulfillment in their possession. 
First we began to buy. 

We attended Sunday school on Sunday mornings. 
Went not because we had to, but because we liked 
our teacher. She did not ask us questions from the 
Quarterly. She did not scold us for not knowing 
the golden text. She told us fascinating stories about 
Moses, David, Jonathan, Samson, Jezebel, Joseph, 
Esther, Herod, Jesus, Pilate and Saint Paul. We 
believed what she told us, and we talked about these 
real men and real women on our way to the Thieves’ 
Market after Sunday school was over. 

In our pockets chinked small change. If we had 
been given a quarter for the collection plate, we 
changed it for two dimes and a five-cent piece at the 
ice-cream store before we entered the house of God. 
Thus we could make a contribution of more than a 
mere tithe unto Jehovah and still have a sufficiency 
for purchases at the Baratillo. If our class col- 
lection seemed sometimes too light, our teacher made 
up the deficit with a contribution of her own. She 
did not investigate our financial standing. She some- 


HEAR EI ACL, eB OY; 31 


times handed us a bright half dollar for ice-cream 
on our way home. I verily believe that she thought 
we went home. 

Her story of Achan troubled us slightly. You 
remember how Achan buried a goodly Babylonish 
garment, two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge 
of gold beneath his tent when he should have deliv- 
ered them up to Joshua for the service of Jehovah. 
And how, when he was discovered, all Israel stoned 
him with stones and burned him with fire and raised 
over him a great heap of stones as a monument to 
his crime. I remember worrying over the possible . 
personal application of this story to my own sin of 
keeping two dimes of a changed quarter and deliver- 
ing only a five-cent piece into the treasury of the 
Lord. I remember, too, how relieved I felt, when, 
sharing my perplexity with Merril, he settled the 
question with boylike precision: ‘‘Shucks! we're 
only just kids. God nor nobody thinks about this 
chicken-feed. ’Tain’t like a wedge of gold. Gee but 
I'd like to find a wedge of gold, though, some- 
wheres.” I believe I recall almost his very words. 
We forgot Achan and spent our chicken-feed ex- 
haustively among the Baraitillo stalls. 

Before dropping Achan here, however, may I 
say that our teacher’s stories in Sunday school car- 
ried no moral appendage. She gave us facts, or 
what she believed were facts, as interestingly as she 
knew how, and left us alone to draw our own con- 
clusions from those facts. Had she preached a short 


ce! OL ER Al BOY, 


sermon with the story of Achan as a text, the matter 
might have been closed for us. We would not have 
thought about it. We would have accepted her con- 
clusions. Perhaps we would have reformed and paid 
full measure of our substance unto God. Probably 
we should have continued our financial practice and 
chosen to take the consequences of our sin outright. 
But the intellectual element, our own temporary 
perplexity, would have vanished. As it was, this 
story stimulated us to do our own thinking, brief 
though that thinking was. It led toward an ac- 
quaintanceship with our own conscience. It precipi- 
tated a very juvenile, yet a none less ethical dis- 
cussion of moral values. I believe it contributed 
a particle to the evolution of our code of gang 
morals. Let us step from the story of Achan to 
the Baratillo again. 

Of real pickpockets, burglars, highwaymen and 
bandits I believe we boys saw very few. ‘They plied 
their trade outside the stone walls of the market, 
sold their goods to the owners of stalls by night and 
after business hours, keeping safely away from the 
eyes of the timid little policemen who wandered 
dutifully among the crowds on Sunday morning. But 
to us every cook, maid, stable-man, peddler and 
impecunious peon who sold a pair of shoes or a 
rusty key to a market tradesman was a probable 
criminal of rank from a pilfering servant to a Pancho 
Villa. 


Among these real and imaginary brigands, we 


TH REA BOY 33 


boys began to moralize. We moralized because we 
wanted something. Morality is genetically a logical 
justification for desire and the fulfillment of desire. 
However abstruse, philosophical and even mystical 
it may later become, it has its roots in feeling, in 
wish. Mankind felt and wished very strongly before 
it began to think and to justify thought. So with 
us boys. We wanted things. We wanted more 
things than we had money to pay for. Things 
looked awfully good to us. A pearl-handled knife 
with half a dozen entrancing blades looked especially 
good to Hugo. At school, one Monday morning, 
Hugo sharpened a pencil with that knife. At recess — 
Merril asked him how he got the money to buy the 
expensive bit of hardware. Before recess was over 
every member of our gang had learned that Hugo 
had stolen that knife from a lame stall-keeper with 
one eye. Our feelings were chaotic. Our opinions 
were diverse. We postponed discussion until after 
school upon the ringing of the bell. Then Hugo 
moralized. As nearly as I can recall, he moralized 
like this: 

“The knife was stolen by somebody. ‘The stall- 
keeper had no right to buy it because it had been 
stolen. It only half belonged to the man who bought 
it. His price was so high that anyone would be 
cheated who bought it. It wasn’t so bad for me to 
steal the knife from that man as though I had 


swiped it from the man who really owned it. Was 
itp 


34. THE Baby Aly." BiOvVYs 


I doubt if we thought Hugo was right, but neither 
did we condemn him as wrong. We pooled our 
opinions, and from the mixture there evolved a 
shadowy justification for Hugo’s act which seemed 
to grow up into each individual imagination as an 
irritating urge to go and do likewise. Our group 
mind was subtly turned toward a new field of activity 
and adventure. 


II 


On the following Sunday each one of us contrib- 
uted one or more things to a robber’s pool of stolen 
goods. We eyed our plunder with a mixed feeling 
of triumph, fear and promising anticipation of yet 
greater adventures. Intoxicated by the novelty of 
our initial success, we ceased to moralize and simply 
rejoiced in a thrilling fact. We were bandits, at 
one with David, Robin Hood, Captain Kidd and 
Jesse James. Our die was cast. Each was guilty, 
each was triumphant, a hero and a fellow criminal 
to himself and to his pals. “Team-work and loyalty 
had suddenly come into our lives, not as words, but 
in action. Doing hazardous things together drew 
us close to each other, united us in a common bond 
of fear and prideful hope. Our gang became a vital 
reality, a composite creature with a common purpose 
and with a common danger. We tingled with a new 
sensation. We entered a sudden and thrilling epoch 
of our lives. We encountered our first real problem 
as outlaws; how to use and enjoy our plunder, and 


SUAPT EG RST AD DT iB Ony, 35 


yet keep it safely out of sight, away from the world 
of laws, of rights and wrongs. 

Instinctively we turned to mother-earth. With 
the same precision with which a dog will bury a bone, 
we turned earthwards for protection and decided to 
dig a cave. All the cave-lore of our omnivorous 
reading of forbidden nickel novels came pouring 
into an excited chatter of boy tongues. The genii 
of Aladdin never conjured up a more elaborately 
equipped and embellished cavern than our composite 
plan evolved that Sunday afternoon. I remember 
that it contained a swimming-pool, shower-baths, 
electric lighting and telephone system, divans, 
vaults, secret chambers, a business office, chemical 
laboratory, arsenal and a dungeon for hostages and 
kidnaped scions of our enemies, the rural police. 
Not only did this all seem possible and practical, but 
we planned immediate preliminaries and decided to 
begin work at once. 

I have mentioned some miner’s picks, a bottle of 
glycerine and some cotton on the Baraiillo stalls. 
Merril, a miner’s son, suggested that these things, 
together with some nitric acid were all we needed 
for engineering operations. We stole the picks, cot- 
ton and glycerine and. bought a phial of nitric acid 
for the home brewing of nitro-glycerine, according 
to Merril’s recipe. Modern science hand in hand 
with mankind’s primordial urge to scratch and dig 
inthe earth! Boy-mind, striking spark on boy-mind 
had lighted an architectonic dream. ‘he bandit be- 


36 THE RAL BOY 


came the builder. Team-work again, and loyalty, 
united in a common purpose toward a shining goal. 

Money, barter, Sunday-school stories, school, 
baseball and even home now played a relatively in- 
significant part in our conscious lives. If money was 
scarce, brains were quick and fingers agile. If David 
had lived in a cave, we were about to inhabit a cavern 
that would make kings turn green with envy. If 
we neglected the geography of the school-room for 
the topography of rain-gullied hills, what booted a 
scolding from our teacher, or even an hour after 
school, so long as Saturdays and Sundays were free? 
As for home, we felt that we were seldom missed. 

Armed with picks, and with what we believed to 
be the materials for the manufacture of high ex- 
plosives, we sought a cave, or a place to dig a cave. 
Were I writing a story instead of a book on educa- 
tion, I could set down a series of adventures here 
possibly as enviable to a boy today as were the ex- 
ploits of Street and Smith heroes to us lads half a 
generation ago. We started to dig a hole into the 
thick walls of an adobe fortress near the castle of 
Chapultepec. The rural guards discovered and dis- 
persed us, confiscating our tools, revolvers, chemicals 
and miscellany, arresting Francis and throwing panic 
among our parents. We deliberately recouped our 
supplies, trudged far out into the canyon country 
of San Pedro, discovered a deep hollow under a 
thin, high waterfall and set to digging again. For- 
tunately for us, when we essayed a blast with our 


ASE Roi ATL +B OY 37 


amateur nitro-glycerine, part of the cave fell in upon 
the charge before it could go off, and we moved on 
to a tepetate mine, a mile or so away. 

Tepetate is a soft, porous, conglomerate stone 
which is cut out in large cubes from cave-quarries. 
These quarries extended for hundreds of feet into 
the canyon sides and afforded us at least a partial 
realization of our dream. ‘The police frustrated our 
attempt to tap the telegraph wires for current to 
light our Edison bulbs, but we acquired a railroad 
lantern and some candles and began to make for 
ourselves a fortress and a home. Here we stored 
our small plunder, and here we lived our life until 
the hand of Jehovah reached down from heaven, 
shifted our center of interest and changed the tenure 
of our lives. 


Ill 


Jehovah, we boys had been taught in Sunday- 
school, was a jealous God, and while sometimes 
kindly and generous, he could also be vindictive 
and revengeful. There is little doubt in my mind 
that we boys feared the Lord. We certainly did 
not love him, or particularly like him. He was a 
sort of disembodied father, forever in a watchful 
mood and carrying a trunk strap or a switch. We 
feared him, and in this fear there lay the beginning 
of wisdom. 

We had learned that it was relatively easy to 
put things over on the police, on market-men, and 


38 THE REAL BOY 


on our own parents. If the lazy police caught us, 
our parents came to the rescue and saved us from, 
or got us out of jail. Our brief sojourns in the 
calaboose were rather good fun, and certainly marks 
of distinction. Punishment at parental hands was 
sometimes physically painful, but soon over and 
easily forgotten. God, however, worked mysteri- 
ously, occultly and behind our backs, as it were. We 
believed in his hidden presence and dim fears of his 
possible wrath and punishment haunted our small 
hearts. Stories, like that of Adam or Esau, and 
the threat to cremate the heathen like stubble as 
recorded by Malachi, had rooted themselves in our 
imaginations. ‘The age of doubt had not yet come 
to us. We were thorough fundamentalists, and the 
power of these gray old stories was genuinely patent 
in our waking, mercurial lives. 

One day Francis and I were melting lead on his 
mother’s charcoal stove. We were commissioned to 
make bullets for our next fight with the greasers of 
Santa Maria. ‘These battles were not innocuous 
affairs. We fought with sling-shots and nigger- 
shooters charged with pebbles or lead balls. My 
nose was broken in one scrimmage and I was knocked 
senseless by a blow on the back of my head in an- 
other, to mention only my own wound-stripes. We 
prepared for war in earnest, and the making of bul- 
lets was one of our prized commissions. Francis, 
impatient with time, poured kerosene on the glowing 
coals. ‘The classic result followed, but without more 


EEE ROG AGL, SBiO WW: 39 


grievous damage than singed eyebrows, scorched 
clothes and a kitchen which we were still trying to 
put to rights when Mrs. Kane discovered us. 
Parental inquiry extended, as usual, only over 
the surface of things and dealt merely with apparent 
facts. It neglected reasons, causes and background, 
dealing only with the results of faulty technical pro- 
cedure. And so happy was this brooding mother 
over her son’s escape from incinerary death that we 
boys sat at supper that evening conscious only of a 
miraculous escape at the hands of a graciously watch- 
ful God who had predestined us to grow up into 
upright and noble men. | 


IV 


I am trying to stick closely to what I feel is true 
regarding the working of our boy minds in these 
gangster days. I want action to speak wherever 
possible, instead of philosophizing. I do not at- 
tempt to explain the events that followed such a 
close shave to calamity as befell us in Mrs. Kane’s 
kitchen, but I believe this incident marked a turning 
point, an epoch in our lives. I believe that God, or 
providence, or chance, as you will, in the ancient garb 
of the Hebraic Jehovah touched and changed our 
ways. and, through our ways, our thinking and our 
education. 

On the Sunday following the explosion, Francis 
said that he could not go with us to the Baratillo. 
Astonished questioning brought forth the confession 


40 THES (RRA eB Oy? 


that he had promised his mother that he would be 
good. I recall that we got a distinct impression that 
his resolve was partly founded on an inward grati- 
tude for delivery from a flaming death. He said 
that he would like to resign from the gang, as it did 
not seem fair to belong and yet refuse to go the 
way of his comrades. We went on without him, 
refusing his resignation, but with his words hid away 
in our hearts. Our>catch at the Thieves’ Market 
was insignificant that day. Merril remarked, on 
our way home (I have always remembered his 
words): ‘‘Fellows, I guess Ill swipe like hell next 
Sunday and then quit for good.” 

As a gang we had no moral leadership. Physically 
we followed Merril, for he was the strongest and 
most daring. Mentally, Francis led us, for his mind 
was quicker to plan and plot, elude and escape, de- 
cide and compromise. No one of us, however, was 
priest or prophet with a “thou shalt” or “thou shalt 
not.” We had no written or spoken code of law. 
We felt few negative tabus. Our action was largely 
on collective impulse, it was swayed by a tacit ma- 
jority expressed not in votes but in an atmosphere 
of agreement or disagreement very difficult to de- 
fine. Morally we hung, as it were, on the rim of our 
composite mind. Merril’s remark was individual, 
personal. Yet it permeated amongst us, and modi- 
fied our group morale, or “quality of the spirit of 
the whole.”’ 

We did not go again, as a gang, to the Volador. 


Ha ee RoE AT) BOY 41 


On the Sunday following Merril’s declaration we de- 
cided to go to Chapultepec park and swipe. cannon 
balls. We expressed no reason for this change of 
way in words. Underneath our action had flowed a 
week of conscious and unconscious cerebration, partly 
concerning the right and wrong of stealing. Find- 
ing grape-shot in the walls of Chapultepec castle, or 
Molino del Rey (have you forgotten your school- 
day history of our Mexican war?), while prohibited 
by the police, failed to fall into our category of real 
stealing, even of stealing from the accomplices of 
thieves. No one, we felt, owned those ancient 
missiles of the war of 1847, unless indeed, they re- 
mained the property of the United States, whose 
cannon had fired them at the castle walls. We felt 
conscience free to lug off as many as we could hide 
underneath our coats. 

The thought of God hardly entered the fringe of 
our new equation. We left Him behind, as it were, 
to watch the Baraitillo that morning, and perhaps to 
miss us from our accustomed round among the stalls. 
I do not know, of course, but I feel that we all ex- 
perienced a sense of relief at this change in our Sun- 
day behavior, perhaps like that of Bunyan’s Chris- 
tian at the foot of the roadside cross. I believe, too, 
that we felt pleasantly that we were doing some- 
thing of which our generous, boy-blind parents would 
approve. For with all their seeming indifference to 
our leisure time, our parents loved us, and we loved 
them, more dearly perhaps than we knew. We were 


42 THE REAL BOY 


youngsters between eight and twelve, and home to us 
all was more than a place to eat, and sleep, and get 
spanked or licked, according as a hand or a strap 
was used. I believe that the influence of home and 
of parents worked out into our evolving conceptions 
of personal and social life more steadily, though less 
vividly, than the realistic idea of God or the memor- 
able stories told us on Sunday mornings by Mrs. 
Walker. ‘These three spiritual forces played con- 
stantly into our personal lives and into the life of 
the gang, and it was through Mrs. Walker that our 
first definitely intellectual interest was born. 

Red rust on a sphere of iron shrapnel led Kenneth 
Walker to discuss oxidation with his mother. She 
followed up his interest with a set of test-tubes, an 
alcohol lamp and sundry chemicals in bottles and 
boxes, together with a thin, paper-bound book of 
experiments. He shared these with us, and our brief 
career in chemistry began. Spoiled rugs, marred 
dressers, stained bathtubs, noxious smells and a con- 
stant dread lest our homes be blown to atoms was 
part of the price our parents paid for the new en- 
thusiasm; but it brought us home, for a time, and 
our parents could think in terms of firemen instead 
of the police. 


Vv 


Now may I point out a few striking differences 
between the education a boy gets in his leisure time, 
and that which is rather forced upon him in school. 


THE REAL BOY 43 


When I say that my own education began in the 
Thieves’ Market, I am not forgetful that at the 
same time I was attending school. For five days 
during the week we boys underwent an inductive 
process of dates, axioms, rules, definitions, stereo- 
typed questions and'stereotyped answers. We sub- 
mitted dutifully, were mildly proud of good report 
cards and examination marks, and joined the chorus 
of yelling delight when the session was over every 
afternoon. Doubtless there was value to us in the 
multiplication table, a few rudiments of spelling 
and grammar, and the knowledge that Columbus. 
discovered America in 1492. My only point here is 
that, while the Grammar School spoke to my head 
and induced a few obvious facts, the Thieves’ Mar- 
ket had talked directly to my heart and awoke cer- 
tain primitive feelings which were the foundation 
for some very real thinking about fundamental hu- 
man problems, and led to intense, vigorous and 
thoroughly educational activity. 

For, corollary to our banditry, cave life and 
partial civilization through test-tube and beaker 
and retort there came to us innumerable drawings- 
out which taxed our brains and muscles, tested 
our nerve and tried our moral stamina as _ in- 
dividuals and as members of a codperating group. 
We learned that a little lie like ‘‘we were playing 
ball” can cover a multitude of peccadillos, and a 
day or a week of doing otherwise than playing 
ball. We learned also that truth, when it came to 


44 Tih EvGRah AT) (BO y 


bed-rock things, was our best ally and that in times 
of crisis it were best to depend upon it for salva- 
tion. We learned that we could be forgiven for 
wriggling into bull-fights, cock-fights and prohibited 
fiestas and fairs; but that lying was a sin against the 
Holy Ghost bringing anger first, and then sorrow 
to our parents. They could smile at us after a lick- 
ing for a sling-shot fight, but after the discovery of 
an untruth there was much weeping and wailing and 
genashing of teeth. We could deceive our parents as 
to our physical whereabouts and activities, but in 
questions of honor, we found that they, like God, 
looked beneath the outward appearance and straight 
into our hearts when there was doubt in their minds 
as to the integrity of the words of our mouths. This 
was perhaps the capital lesson of our youngster 
days. , 

Group loyalty demanded truth between us boys. 
Our words were good as gold when they related to 
the welfare of the gang. We were preposterous 
liars, even to each other, about our individual prow- 
ess, our fathers’ income, mothers’ jewelry, our 
mythical friends and wholly imaginary sweethearts; 
but when a statement bore on one’s relation to the 
gang, it rang true as a cathedral bell. That was 
Mrs. Walker’s test of truth. She told us to listen 
to the great bronze bells of the old cathedral, how 
clear and sound they rang on Sunday morning. Such 
was the ring of truth. We pondered this symbol 
and often referred to it in those rare moments of 


ene REAL BOY 45 


seriousness when even a small boy turns philosopher 
and saint. 

Friendship, team-work and personal loyalties to 
each other were born and grew through the doing of 
constructive things together. We dug in the ground, 
made mortar, laid tepetate, knotted rope ladders, 
molded bullets, shot and cooked small game, fished 
and fought for each other and for that invisible 
spiritual reality, the gang. We taught each other 
to shoot and swim and ride horseback. No adult 
had a hand in our learning process as members of 
the gang, though we imitated older boys and read 
those marvelously colorful weeklies wherein walked 
the most vivid heroes of our imagination. 

Now I live in a new day. Scout Masters, Club 
Leaders, Big Brothers, Camp Directors and Coun- 
cilors, country-day schools and Sunday-vacation 
schools; innumerable agencies have sprung up 
around the idea that the primitive, instinctive urges 
of boyhood must be harnessed to constructive, char- 
acter-building aims. Ina later chapter I shall return 
to this dream of bringing to boy-soul some of the 
finer forms of expression for those deep motives and 
tendencies upon which the life of the spirit is built, 
and will show the dream in partial realization. 


CHAPTER II 


THE MAJOR TOUCHES OUR HEARTS 


The innermost essential of the child is soul. To 
afford it opportunity to lift itself out of the limita- 
tions of instinct into the freedom of purposeful 
will, should be the aim of education. 

—LockeE. 


I 


THE inner, instinctive savageries of boyhood are 
universal. So isits soul. I have watched the son of 
a Chicago multimillionaire rifle peanuts from a slot 
machine with a hooked wire. When I asked him if 
he had no money, he replied: ‘Sure, but what’s 
the fun buying peanuts when you can swipe them?” 
I have watched the son of a Bontoc-Igorote head- 
hunter reading the Gospel according to St. Mark. 
When I asked him why he read, he replied that he 
wanted to find out about God. I have seen the 
predatory instinct of my old gang at work alike in 
the after-school activities of Chicago’s north side, 
and on the sidewalks of New York east of Avenue 
A. Spitballs fly just as far and just as accurately 
in our élite country-day schools as they do in the 
classic little square buildings at our country cross- 
roads. Marbles for keeps, craps, cards, matched 
pennies and preposterous betting are generic and 

46 


Tei aR Ad BG) V 47 


seasonal despite every effort at reform from above. 
Corn-silk, pipes, cigarettes . . . what boy escapes 
them entirely? Long before the teens small Eves 
begin to whisper softly to Adams in knee-pants about 
the taste of forbidden apples. Despite school walls, 
teachers, truant officers, superintendents and books, 
the real education of our youngsters goes on. They 
discover the world as it is, whatever our efforts to 
show them a world as it ought to be. 

We boys at the Grammar School in Mexico City 
were instinctively curious about the world in which 
we lived. We inquired diligently into the details of — 
bull-fighting, cock-fighting, prize-fighting and horse- 
racing because these things seemed paramount in our 
social order. The Spanish Inquisition had left deep 
marks in the folk-history of Mexico, and these we 
studied with all the avidity of scholars over their 
books. We constructed spanking-machines, thumb- 
screws, racks and grotesque Iron Maidens made of 
long pine boxes in which Bibles had been shipped 
to my father for distribution among the heathen. 
Cemeteries drew us with a mysterious magnetism, 
and each of us acquired one or more skulls and stray 
bones from the heaps in hidden corners where the 
remains were placed of those whose sepulchral rent 
had not been paid. Yet we were also inquisitive 
about the world of school, and we questioned its 
elements, though with but little enthusiasm. 

Soon after my eleventh birthday, Latin was pre- 
scribed for me. I was set to learning the words 


48 THE REAL BOY 


tuba, tubae, tubam, tuba, which, being interpreted 
meant a trumpet, of a trumpet, for a trumpet and 
by a trumpet, I believe. Asking why these different 
spellings gave varied meanings to the word, I was 
told to learn my declension and not bother my 
teacher with premature questioning. For some oc- 
cult reason [ sulked and refused to learn or recite 
the lesson until my question was answered. I was 
mildly flogged with a dog-whip and told not to re- 
turn to school until I had mastered tuba and was 
ready to recite it by rote. I refused to return. My 
parents decided to board me out at school in the 
United States. I rejoiced and was exceedingly glad. 
We started north within a month. 


II 


On the steamer we read school catalogues. You 
know them; they are almost identically alike. Good 
paper, expensive and embossed covers, photographs 
taken from artistically flattering angles, aims and 
ideals stated in more or less pious language, and 
curricula, oriented toward college, similar almost 
word for word. The following paragraph, in one 
of these catalogues, led my parents to decide upon 
the school for me: 


“As they may be guided by wisdom from the 
Great Teacher they will seek to help every boy to- 
ward an earnest, true manhood. Onward and Up- 
ward is our motto, and onward and upward is the 
course pursued in all that will promote the highest 


eH GREAT, BOY: 49 


interest of the sons committed to the care of the 
school. The aim of Mohegan is a high one, a school 
whose influence, whose whole atmosphere, will con- 
duce to the development of earnest, manly, Christian 
character.” 


Now with all my subsequent antipathy to the 
average American boarding school, despite the cant 
and hypocrisy and pious camouflage that I have 
found in so many private schools, I believe and main- 
tain that the man who wrote those words for his 
catalogue was earnestly sincere in what he said, and 
that he tried to live up to their spirit and letter 
according to his light. 

Major Waters was one of those Head Masters, 
or Principals, of American boarding schools whom 
one must respect and admire for his radiating in- 
tegrity of character, however one may disagree with 
his medieval philosophy, his narrowing religious 
horizon or his academic curriculum. ‘The influence 
of such men upon boys makes for sturdiness of char- 
acter through sheer force of contagion. They do 
not need to preach morality, or soundness of convic- 
tion, or strength of will. They are relatively silent 
men, but the lesson of their lives jumps across the 
gap between man and boy like a spark between elec- 
trodes. ‘They galvanize by what they are and do 
more than by what they say. I remember very few 
of the words Major Waters spoke, but I have always 
felt the deep impress of his life upon my early years. 

The only words I remember of Major’s are: 


50 CE nav A) iB Oe 


“Ed, I believe you are a good boy” and “I am a 
little man, but I can fight!” ‘The first were said to 
me casually as he passed through his office where I 
was contemplating a 95 mark on my physiology 
paper. He spoke in a tone of voice that led his 
words from my ears down into my heart and lodged 
them there, untrue, but warm and comforting. I 
knew very well that I was not a good boy; but it was 
almost inspiring to. hear him say that he believed I 
was, and to hear him say it in that way. ‘There is 
more reality to a boy in a tone of voice than in a 
multitude of words. ‘The right inflection upon the 
proper syllable can mean more to him than an hour 
of impassioned sermonizing. A boy does not need 
many words froma man: He needs a few, and these 
freighted with sympathetic sincerity of feeling. He 
needs not logic, but faith. Such words were the 
Mayjor’s when he spoke them. 

“T am a little man, but I can fight!” thundered 
down upon our heads from the platform in front of 
our assembly-room desks. ‘The Major was short, 
stocky, gray and bald, with kindly blue eyes set in 
a firm and square-jawed face. His eyes registered 
a righteous anger that day, and we felt their right- 
eousness as well as their ire. A dozen of us had 
stuffed dummies in our beds the night before, crawled 
down a rope outside my window, raided a nearby 
cider-mill and rowed about the lake in boats until 
the phantom of false morning died. A prowling 
professor had found his habitually restless dormi- 


Pe RE AUT B Ory 51 


tory all too quiet, discovered a dummy, set up an 
alarm and led to our arrest, one by one as we re- 
turned in the faint but revealing light of dawn. 

Now the Major fought, not against us boys, but 
against a principle of evil. He fought a battle of 
persuasion. Not content with mere discovery and 
punishment, he insisted that we learn where we had 
gone wrong, and why we should go right. He ham- 
mered away at us, individually and collectively until 
we were thoroughly convinced of our guilt. He kept 
fighting until we saw that decency and good sports- 
manship, both toward our school and toward our 
parents, were on his side of the issue. He was not 
content until every one of us was with him, shoulder 
to shoulder in support of the morale of his school, 
in preservation of the quality of the spirit of the 
whole, of which we were individual parts. He was 
a little man, but we felt that he had a big heart. He 
could fight, and he could win. 

We boys marched around the cinder-path with 
heavy rifles on our shoulders for many hours in 
memory of that exploit. If the result of our conduct 
had stopped there, if Major had been content, like 
the Mikado, to “let the punishment fit the crime,”’ 
we boys would have been damaged spiritually, and 
the morale of our school would have dropped a peg 
or two. As it was, Major turned our nocturnal lark 
into a lesson in righteousness. He dealt with us 
not as culprits, but as formative characters. His 
sympathy for us as growing boys was tempered with 


52 TH Bs Rabea LR OA 


a firmness and with enough warranted anger to make 
us respond to both its appeal and its power. 

This was education of the soul. Here feeling and 
emotion were touched first, intellect second. He 
spoke to our heads, but he touched our hearts first, 
and then linked up our reason with his own and made 
us feel at one with him ona common job. His words 
were few, following that first dramatic statement, 
but they flew straight to their mark and hit hard. 
We boys pondered them as we marched out our 
appointed time at shoulder-arms. Our punishment 
was an educational experience. | 


It} 


The Major was a religious man, a professing 
Christian, but not pious. We boys knew the pious 
kind, and quickly labeled thus some of our professors 
at morning prayers. To their praying we never 
listened. From the invocation to Almighty God to 
the periodic Amen our thoughts wandered in their 
own green pastures or lay down by their favorite still 
waters. Our heads rested comfortably on our 
cushiony Bibles and occasionally we drowsed very 
closely to the boundary of sleep. We tacitly as- 
sumed that words of prayer were addressed to God 
and not tous. Perhaps He was indulgent enough to 
listen to even the cantiest of our instructors. Our 
own patience was not so enduring. I believe we all 
felt that God must listen when the Major spoke, 


priate Reh ALLA BOY, 53 


however, for he spoke with authority and not as the 
scribes. We boys listened to the Major. His re- 
quests were brief and to the point. We all liked the 
quality of his voice and its tone. 

The redeeming feature of morning prayer was 
that we sang together. Sometimes we joked after- 
wards about the absurdly ridiculous words of our 
ancient gospel hymns and the clever among us paro- 
died them unmercifully if not wickedly. Their 
quaint melodies, however, and the partial harmony 
of blending voices got down below the surface of 
our thought and stirred feelings within us which 
only good music can arouse. I have found but lit- 
tle, since those days, that can equal those simple 
and often rhythmic melodies as a quiet tonic for 
the soul at the beginning or the close of day. 

On Sunday afternoons, however, it was our duty 
to hear the Bible expounded, usually by one of the 
minor professors. Afterwards the members of a 
most skeptical Bible Club met to indulge in juvenile 
higher criticism. We deliberately doubted, not so 
much the Bible, as our professor’s interpretation. 
We doubted not only the classic stories of the fall 
of Jericho, the stoppage of the sun in heaven at 
Joshua’s command and the parting open of the Red 
Sea; but we invaded the New Testament, seeking 
scientific justification for the miracles of Jesus and 
attempted to analyze the Lord’s Prayer. An ani- 
mated discussion behind my closed door once ar- 
rested Major Waters upon his journey down the 


54 ED ER ea Ls Ci) Sr 


hall. Of course I cannot recall our words verbatim, 
but what he heard was something very much like 
this: 


Dorsey: The Bible says his side got pierced. 

Rocers: But I’ve seen pictures where it was his 
heart got hit. 

Pop: Well, water might have come from his side 
if the spear went through his stomach first. Couldn’t 
have come from his heart. That’s all blood. 

Rocers: Maybe the spear went through his 
stomach and then hit his heart too. 

A knock on my door, and Major inquired what 
the argument was about. I gave him the gist of our 
discussion. He listened with a sympathetic smile 
and asked us to postpone further argument until 
physiology class on Tuesday. He left us staring at 
each other in amazement at having escaped indict- 
ment for heresy or a call to his private office. 

On Tuesday we went to class in high anticipa- 
tion of an interesting hour. A sheep’s heart lay on 
the dissecting table and Major called us around him 
while he prepared to demonstrate with scalpel and 
tweezers and hooks. Tugging at the thin, tough 
membrane around the muscular organ, he explained 
its function as the pericardium, peri meaning around 
and cardium meaning heart. A watery fluid, acting 
as a lubricant to this hard working pump, he told 
us, lay between the muscular walls and the surround- 
ing sheath. Puncturing the pericardium, he showed 


TE OP) AGS Die 8 Dah OP'S 55 


us a tiny stream of colorless liquid which flowed 
out onto the table and trickled to the floor. 

‘Now,’ said Major, looking keenly at Rogers, 
then at Dorsey and lastly at me, “could it not be 
that the soldier who pierced the side of our Lord 
with his spear struck straight and true to the heart, 
and still might not it have seemed that both blood 
and water flowed from the wounded side?” 

I believe we nodded our heads, and that our lesson 
proceeded to more secular phases of physiology. 
There was no need for further theological discus- 
sion. Our Sunday’s argument was closed with the 
stroke of a scalpel, and yet we boys were left good 
leeway to continue thinking. Major presented us 
a question, after all. ‘‘Might it not have seemed?” 
were his words, or at least his meaning. He trusted 
us to think. Instead of being brought to a chamber 
of the inquisition we had come to a scientific labora- 
tory for the testing of truth. Looking back upon 
the Major’s demonstration, it seems naive enough, 
but there was sympathy there, and faith enough on 
Major’s part to leave us with a question in a field 
supposedly quite mystically dangerous. 

Here is an instance of good teacherhood in post- 
ponement. Major waited until time and circum- 
stance were most fitting to bring up his point. ‘This, 
it seems to me, is a technical acquirement in the 
art of teaching which will find fuller expression 
in the school of tomorrow than it does in our edu- 
cation today. 


56 DHE. REAL BOY 


IV 


To us boys, Major Waters was an old man. I 
thought of him when Upton Sinclair characterized 
modern education as “‘a league of old men trying 
to make the young what the old want them to be.” 
Yet we boys respected and some of us loved the 
Major. He taught us some strong, deep life les- 
sons. While he did not teach us to think radically, 
neither did he dam our thoughts. He was not one 
of Kipling’s old men who “‘lift up the ropes that 
constrained our youth to bind on our children’s 
hands.’”’ Neither was he like Sinclair’s old peda- 
gogues upon whom “modern life comes rushing 
down like a storm and who have no idea what to 
do with it or how to handle it.” Major had an idea 
that he had learned something of the real meaning 
of life, of truth, of rightness and he wanted to share 
what he had learned with us. Still, Major was, as 
some of us younger teachers are today, facing some- 
what wistfully that “hailstorm of boys and girls” 
and asking, too, ‘“‘what are they? what do they 
mean? these strange, wild creatures, thrusting them- 
selves forward, demanding their rights, clamoring 
for new things never heard of by the old professors! 
Despising ‘Tennyson and demanding Bernard 
Shaw! Doubting the Bible, disputing property 
rights, questioning marriage, discussing outrageous 
things, divorce, birth-control, actually right in pub- 
lic!’ Major tried to lead our sometimes radical 


eR ASL B Orn Oy 


thinking into channels which he believed age-tested 
and found good. He did not repress or inhibit, he 
tried almost always to find a way to build. 

Once, however, Major failed me. I had walked 
into his office full of a desire to supplement my 
favorite study of physiology with a course in chem- 
istry. He said that I must complete a year of 
physics first. I asked him why and he answered 
that the curriculum so ordered it. I argued but 
Major was firm for his rules of procedure. He 
was probably busy with important matters of ad- 
ministration at the time and failed to grasp the 
significance of my enthusiasm or to appreciate my 
real interest in the underlying reason for having to 
study physics first. I felt, for the moment, that I 
had lost a friend. 

A few days later I asked permission to go to 
town to have my picture taken. I returned with a 
blank key, a small vise and a file. ‘That evening 
I transformed my blank into a pass-key and tried 
it on the door of the chemical laboratory. It turned 
the lock. I opened and closed the door, feeling 
like a cross between a burglar and a scientific 
pioneer. 

In the days following, while a few of my fellows 
played football and the rest stood rooting on the 
sidelines, our teachers among them, trying hard to 
be boys, I had the laboratory to myself. The first 
experiments in Remsen’s chemistry were not spec- 
tacular enough. I wanted color, smoke, noise. So 


58 kB Roe 0B CA 


I became an empiricist, mixing small quantities from , 
this bottle with small quantities from that, or com- 
bining mysterious powders with liquids labeled in 
numbered letters which I did not understand. One 
day I left precipitately by the window, hearing the 
professor of chemistry talking in the hallway. 
Fortunately for me, I had broken a retort that 
afternoon and spread considerable confusion of 
glass and liquid in the sink which I was unable to 
clear away before my sudden departure. Suspicion 
followed and discovery overtook me. My key was 
confiscated and there was a faculty discussion con- 
cerning my fall from grace. ‘This departure from 
the path of rectitude was considered extraordinary 
for I had previously won a medal of solid gold for 
deportment and was considered a ‘‘wholesome influ- 
ence among the younger boys.’ It was at this point 
that Major failed me. Instead of looking below the 
surface of my act, analyzing its background and at- 
tempting to turn an error into a vital lesson, he 
stopped short with a justly merited reprimand. 
Having followed a resurgence of the predatory 
instinct of Thieves’ Market days, I was now left 
alone to handle this elemental quality in my nature 
by myself. Further, my approach to one whom I 
had hitherto considered a guide and friend was 
blocked. Corollary to these was the fact that a gen- 
uine thirst for knowledge and experience, for which 
I had chosen to take an unsocial and perhaps danger- 
ous risk was rebuked into stagnant quiescence. This 


AE REAL IBOY 59 


sentence reveals the inadequacy of words to ex- 
press one’s exact meaning. A thirst can hardly 
become stagnant, and yet my desire was a thirst 
as real to my soul as thirst for water is to one’s 
body. It seemed to have been “rebuked ”’ into 
something that appears to my imagination as a 
pool whose outlet has been stopped, and in which 
begin to grow a myriad weedy things offensive to 
the nose and eye. 

Without apology for my action, I defend the 
eternal boy against his teacher. This was another 
opportunity for educational achievement, another » 
chance to transmute sin into virtue, if you please. 
Here is a typical case of failure to deal with a boy’s 
heart instead of merely with his mind. Yet even 
here I find manifest a fragment of that providence 
which sometimes seems to brood over growing child- 
hood and youth, for out of my very inward tribula- 
tion and conflict there suddenly opened another well- 
spring of interest, and I made a new friend. 

Reynolds, our teacher of Latin, was sorry for 
me. During study-hour, after my disgrace, he asked 
me if I had a headache and would like to go to bed. 
Since my head did not ache, he suggested that I go 
up to his room, look at his books or loaf around 
until he came upstairs. That was a treat. I went. 
On his book-shelf I found a copy of William James’ 
‘Talks -to Teachers on Psychology and Some of 
Life’s Ideals.’”’ ‘The word psychology intrigued me. 
When Reynolds came in, he told me that Psyche 


60 AOE RABAT UB Oy 


means soul, and ology means the knowledge of, or 
study of a thing. Psychology was the study of the 
mind, or soul. ‘“‘How would you like to be a 
psychologist, Pop?” he asked. 

Pop was a nickname given me because I used to 
place a tin can over the acetylene gas burner in my 
room, fill it with gas and then hold a match over a 
small hole in its top until an explosion followed 
and the can went kiting to the roof. All the boys 
called me Pop, but Reynolds was the only member 
of our faculty who was thus familiar. Even in 
class he called me Pop. I hated Latin, but I worked 
at it hard and got good marks because I liked 
Reynolds and wanted to please him. Naturally, 
when he asked me if I would like to become a psy- 
chologist I was thrilled to the marrow of my thin 
bones. The thought that he believed I might be- 
come an ologist of any kind was wine to my soul. 

My career in chemistry had just been slashed 
down in infancy. I was bitter inside at being mis- 
understood. My thinking during study-hour had 
been vindictively revengeful. I had even planned 
a cave up in the hills behind our school where I 
could chemicalize at will with plundered supplies 
and equipment, even as in days of yore. Now sud- 
denly my imagination was switched into another 
world, where perhaps I might travel in company 
with a sympathetic friend. St. Paul’s dictum that 
‘video meliora proboque deteriora sequor’’ is not 
true to normal boyhood. Show a boy where and 


Neri REAL. BOY 61 


how he can go right, with real interest, with genu- 
ine enthusiasm, and he will gladly go that way. 

I believe that the school of tomorrow will do 
consciously and intelligently and even artistically for 
a boy what a kind providence or a blind chance did 
for me in a very real crisis. With>the conviction 
that the first concern of education is with a child’s 
feeling, emotion, desire, our Majors and faculties 
of tomorrow will not let a strong wish turn inward 
upon itself, link up with simpler, primordial instincts 
and emerge in a negative or anti-social form. In- 
stead of asking what has come over a lad when he | 
goes wrong, they will ask themselves wherein they 
have failed to make good on their job of keeping 
him steered aright. ‘They will themselves be psy- 
chologists, but in the sense of being students of the 
soul, not merely of the intellect. Here I believe 
the tremendous influence of Freud and Stanley Hall 
will lend a strong and helping hand. After the 
spectacular and somewhat morbid smoke of half- 
baked Freudianism has cleared away, educators, I 
believe, will find that the pioneer work in the field 
“of instinct and feeling which has been done by 
Freud and his abler disciples is more fruitful in the 
study and understanding of childhood and adoles- 
cence than it will ever be in the psychoanalysis of 
grown-ups. 

Reynolds, however, knew nothing about Freud, 
nor did anyone in America at that time, I presume. 
Stanley Hall had published his monumental ‘‘Adoles- 


62 DHE .REAL BOY 


cence’ but those huge red volumes were beyond a 
teacher’s purse, just as Doctor Hall’s vocabulary 
was far beyond the limits of our largest diction- 
aries. William James was the only person who 
wrote readably about psychology and his words were 
inspiration and finality among teachers. The word 
psychology, even among the more intelligent, was 
still shrouded in an occult and esoteric film of dubi- 
ous curiosity while, in our universities at least, its 
trend was almost entirely toward mind as intellect 
rather than toward mind as an instrument of feel- 
ing and instinct. So the psychology to which the 
kindly Reynolds introduced me was one of associa- 
tion, interest, attention, memory, ideation, apper- 
ception, habit and will. 

I did not understand these words, but I rattled 
them around on my tongue with: great gusto. When 
my fellows asked me what I meant, I adopted an 
air of mystical superiority and declared that it took 
a great deal of recondite reading in abstruse books 
before one could grasp the significance of these 
things. I read on and on. Reynolds encouraged 
me, despite falling marks in Latin, math and 
physics. My teachers wondered what was the mat- 
ter. My colleagues thought I was “‘going nuts.’”” My 
parents were worried lest I fail to graduate. Major 
Waters told me that I must get out of doors and 
hike, skate or snow-shoe on penalty of informing 
my parents that I was wasting my time and their 
money indoors over outside reading that was not 


ER ATS) <6 Yi 63 


relevant to the purposes of my boarding-school edu- 
cation. He literally drove me into the woods. 

There I walked and talked with my chum Rogers. 
We discussed school life together. Not our les- 
sons, far from it, but our life as two boys among 
boys and their teachers. The bulk of our discus- 
sion was, of course, mere idle chatter, critical gos- 
sip. In a few of our positive points of agreement, 
however, I believe we typified: the general attitude 
of the whole group of students at Mohegan toward 
teachers and toward school. 

We were as one in our admiration for the little 
Major who could, and did, fight. We felt a genu- 
ine love for him, totally unmixed with fear when 
we thought of him as a friend of boys. Rebels 
at heart against such enemies of freedom as reveille, 
taps, drills, study-hour and Sunday services; we be- 
lieved that these things were good for our souls 
whenever we related them to the Major’s per- 
sonality, when we thought of them as a part of his 
will toward us as a friend. His spirit permeated 
all routine and necessity, gave them values where 
otherwise they might have been mere sand and 
thorns. His word, to which we listened, led fur- 
ther, however, and gradually showed us intrinsic 
values in taps and reveille and study-hour. He 
opened horizons for us, enlarged our vision. But 
he did so because he first captured our hearts. To 
the same words from the mouth of another teacher 
we might have listened with a grin. His pedagogy 


64 THE REAL BOY 


may have been largely unconscious; but he followed 
the most important principle in educational psy- 
chology, trusting instinct and feeling as the motive 
power for right thinking translated into right con- 
duct. 

If he touched fear alive, as when he spoke of 
telling my parents about my waste of time; he 
followed that by an immediate appeal to my love 
of parent, school or what he called “going straight.” 
He never appealed to a boy’s fondness for him, 
however. Perhaps that is why we often did things 
because he wanted us to! His attitude was: ‘“‘Don’t 
do that because I want you to, but because it’s 
right.” Yet, for us, it would not have been right 
if Major had been other than he was. A thing 
was right, not abstractly, but concretely because we 
believed ina person. Later, the thing became right 
in itself perhaps, and the transfer from the Major 
to Rightness or Straightness was completed. 

If he awakened our combative instinct, as when 
he challenged us to fight; he followed his challenge 
with a smile and a chance for arbitration and for 
friendliness. But the fight was there, ready and 
forceful. The smile did not quite eclipse the mailed 
fist. Boys respect, admire and submit to superior 
force. This may be purely physical sometimes, or 
it may be moral, or spiritual, shall we say; but it 
must be strong, stronger than they. Boys are very 
quick to sense weakness. ‘They can seldom, if ever, 
be bluffed for long. Of course, they can be incar- 


fi Ear tome he By ca.) @) Yo 65 


cerated, expelled, or merely kept in their seats and 
over their books by a weak adult clothed with suf- 
ficient authority. But they will not follow, they will 
not be governed, they will not submit. They will 
merely pretend. They will knuckle-under until they 
can escape. The Major we followed, because he 
led us with courage, and with a radiating convic- 
tion that he was leading us where we wanted to go. 


CHAPTER III 


AND LEAD US INTO, TEMPTATION 


The fact is that our virtues are habits as much as 
our vices. All our life, as far as it has definite 
form, is but a mass of habits, practical, emotional, 
and intellectual, systematically organized for our 
weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our 
destiny, whatever the latter may be. 

—WILLIAM JAMES. 


I 


My father died before I could graduate from 
Mohegan and, returning to Mexico, I found myself 
earning a living as Timekeeper on a tropical branch 
of the Mexican Central Railroad. Rising before 
sunrise, I rode to our construction point on a hand- 
car and bossed a gang of peons until sundown. 
At noon I crawled under a culvert and read a big 
black book called “Science and Health With Key 
to the Scriptures.’’ Sometimes my interest in this 
book delayed my return to the track at one o'clock. 
I need not set down the language of our foreman 
here. Suffice it that when he reported to the Su- 
perintendent how my leisure time and some of the 
railroad’s time was spent, that functionary informed 
me that a fellow who preferred religion to rail- 


roading had better get a job as sexton of a church 
66 


THE REAL BOY 67 


or secretary to the Y. M. C. A. He also handed 
me a pass to Mexico City with my pay and sent 
me into the third important epoch of my education 
for life. 

I did not apply for a job with the church or with 
the ““Y’’ but became a demonstrator for Packard, 
Buick and Winton automobiles of a now very ancient 
vintage. Incidentally, but very importantly, I met 
the incarnation of “‘good and evil” respectively in the 
persons of Bob Stockbridge and Hugh Pollock. Both 
were Englishmen. Both had keen, quick, receptive, 
penetrating and vigorously active minds. Both were © 
widely read and considerably experienced in the 
world of people and facts. Both were unschooled, 
but self-educated in their own peculiar ways. Of 
Hugh’s background I could learn but little. Robert 
Service has described him so succinctly that I can 
picture him vividly in a fragment of verse: 


‘“There’s a race of men that don’t fit in, 
A race that can’t stay still; 
_, So they break the hearts of kith and kin, 
And they roam the world at will. 


“If they just went straight they might go far; 
They are strong, and brave and true; 
But they’re always tired of the things that are, 
And they want the strange and new. 


“They say: ‘Could I find my proper groove, 
What a deep mark I would make!’ 
So they chop and change, and each fresh move 
Is only a fresh mistake.” 


68 Eh Te Raa AL By Gs y: 


Is it not so, as J. H. Robinson says, that “the 
truest and most profound observations on intelli- 
gence have in the past been made by the poets and, 
in recent times, by story-writers’”’ rather than by the 
philosophers and professional psychologists? Hugh 
crops out again and again in Service and in Kip- 
ling. He is cousin to Conrad’s Almayer and Lord 
Jim. Bob Stockbridge was his polar opposite. 

Bob resolved to become a chemist when he was 
thirteen years old. Apprenticing himself to an 
assayer he tended furnace, toted crucibles, weighed 
bullion, washed bottles and checked figures. At 
night, and even during breakfast and lunch, he 
read the history of chemistry. When I met him, 
in his later teens, his library contained drastically 
underlined and annotated volumes of Darwin, Hux- 
ley, Spencer, Tyndall, Fiske, Haeckel and James in 
addition to chemistry texts galore. He then had 
complete charge of the assaying laboratory and 
showed me a balance of over a thousand dollars 
in his bank. Physically a weakling when he had 
taken up his job, he was then a powerful and well- 
coordinated muscular and nervous engine capable 
of prolonged physical exertion and furnishing a 
splendid reservoir of energy for a delicately sensi- 
tive mind. I have never known such a living incar- 
nation of Huxley’s classic definition of education 
for lites) Yourrecalliit: 


‘That man has had a liberal education who has 


nb hy RIB AT BOY 69 


been so trained in youth that his body is the ready 
servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure 
all the work it is capable of; whose intellect is a 
clear, cold logic engine with all its parts of equal 
strength and in smooth working order; whose mind 
is stored with a knowledge of great fundamental 
truths of nature and of the laws of her operations; 
one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, 
but whose passions are trained to come to heel by 
a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; 
who has learned to love all beauty whether of na- 
ture or of art, to hate all violence, and to respect 
others as himself.”’ 


In Bob there was, too, an element of deeply re- 
ligious mysticism which it is almost impossible to 
describe. Havelock Ellis calls it ‘‘the art of find- 
ing our emotional relationship to the world con- 
ceived as a whole.” It was the God-sense of Spi- 
noza, maker of fine lenses; of Kant, the logician who 
looked up at the stars in awe; of Linneus, the bot- 
anist who felt the presence of God in the opening 
of a flower; of Mendel-who found God’s laws at 
their work in the mathematical heredity of structure 
and color in sweet peas. “If,” says Ellis, “by sci- 
ence we mean the organization of an intellectual 
relationship to the world we live in adequate to give 
us some degree of power over that world, and if 
by mysticism we mean the joyful organization of 
an emotional relationship to the world conceived 
as a whole, the opposition we usually assume to 
exist between them is of comparatively modern 


70 THE REAL BOY 


origin.” Stockbridge actually lived out this idea 
in action, though he never put it into words. When 
I read this sentence in ‘“The Dance of Life,’’ Bob’s 
face and figure seemed to emerge from the page like 
an animated picture. He was movie-photographed 
in verbal form. 


II 


Hugh, on the other hand, was a godless fellow. 
God, for him, was already quite dead. He thought 
that Andreyev’s picture of deity as a pitiful figure 
shrinking back into the gloom of a cave, a sputter- 
ing torch in his hand and growing smaller and 
smaller as he retired, like the giant in Maeterlinck’s 
‘Betrothal,” was obsolete. God was not dying from 
the world, but utterly gone. So were right and 
wrong. Hugh believed that he had progressed, 
with Nietzsche, beyond good and evil. He re- 
garded Love as a plaything, without spiritual sig- 
nificance. Ellen Key was a pious old nun. Have- 
lock Ellis and Edward ‘Carpenter were priestly 
reactionaries in the temple of Eros. One of his fa- 
vorite mottoes came from the lips of Zarathustra: 
“Two different things wanteth a true man: danger 
and diversion. ‘Therefore wanteth he woman, as 
the most dangerous plaything.”’ Toward women he 
took only the cave-man attitude voiced by the old 
crone who told Zarathustra: “Thou goest to 
woman? Do not forget thy whip.” 

Bob, on the contrary, was almost Tennysonian 


Heyl eh EAT (BOY 71 


in his romantic and chivalrous attitude toward 
womankind, and seemed to believe with all his heart 
that there was “no more subtle master under heaven 
than the maiden passion for the maid: 


“Not only to keep down the base in man 

But teach high thought, and amiable words 
And courtliness, and the desire of fame, 

And love of truth, and all that makes a man.” 


“How the hell you can take to that old monk 
Stockbridge and mess around with moldy philoso- 
phies when you ought to be off down the line en- 
joying life beats me. You'll become a cheap edi- 
tion of Paphnutius, too cheap even to use in a story. 
Keep on at this pace and you'll turn parson, but 
the church won’t have you because your head is full 
of Darwin.” I quote Hugh only from memory, 
but I recall quite vividly how, when I repeated his 
worry concerning me to Bob, he pulled from his 
shelf a copy of the ‘Songs of Kabir,” and read to 
me, quite exultantly: 


‘Why put on the robe of a monk, and live aloof 
from the world in lonely pride? 
Behold my heart danceth in the delight of a 
hundred arts, and the creator is well 
pleased.” 


Stockbridge and I had been reading Spencer’s 
“Synthetic Philosophy” together; but we had also 
boxed, skipped rope, played tennis, ridden horse- 


72 THE REAL BOY 


back, tramped fields, climbed mountains, gone 
swimming, attended concerts, opera, the theater and 
even attempted to learn to dance. Hugh lamented 
because we preferred these things to roulette, the 
races, gossip over highballs at the British Club and 
nocturnal visits to the dens of the Recabado and 
among the brilliantly lighted parlors further east. 
Looking back upon my own preference in this mat- 
ter, I do not believe I chose Bob’s way because it 
seemed good, and avoided Hugh’s because it seemed 
evil, but rather because Bob tempted me to things 
more joyous than did Hugh. 

My cloistered private-school education cut short, 
I was at seventeen earning a living and subject 
to those forces and influences which play upon us 
in our leisure hours and which educate us, draw 
us out, whether we will it or not. Friendship, the 
corner-stone of human relationships, and gossip, 
mother of psychology, became my school. Friend- 
ship brought me two sets of temptations, one nega- 
tive and pleasurable, the other positive and happy. 
I do not believe I chose between them. It seems 
to me that I was drawn into the second, and so 
away from the first, by the superiority of its mag- 
netism, its stronger pull upon my soul. Right here 
we have one of the cardinal principles of education 
upon which the school of tomorrow will be built: 
to aid mental and spiritual growth through the pro- 
gressive making of new lessons joyously attractive. 
My dictionary defines temptation as inducement, al- 


THERE TA Ts BOC, 73 


lurement. It has been my experience as a teacher 
that only as I have been able to make learning at- 
tractive, alluring, were my results such as make 
teaching worth while. ‘Teaching has only been worth 
while to me as I have felt myself growing along 
with my pupils. At such times as I have lost the 
attitude of the learner and become a mere imparter 
of knowledge, my feeling has been that of a re- 
jected lover or a disappointed politician. When a 
teacher feels thus, he should turn to selling life 
insurance or clerking in a store. 

Bob made learning attractive to me through the 
contagion of his own enthusiasm. He read Darwin 
with all the avidity which my roommate at Mo- 
hegan had shown for Salammbo or Thais. He 
drummed the punching-bag so merrily that I fol- 
lowed his example for fear of missing some of his 
exultant pleasure in that rhythmic art. Had Hugh 
seemed so joyous over an evening at the Jockey Club 
as Bob was over the fission of paramecia under his 
microscope, I believe I might have joined Hugh’s 
nocturnal prowls instead of visiting the little box 
atop a flat Spanish roof where Stockbridge lived 
among his books. Bob was a true teacher because 
his teaching was a by-product of his own concen- 
trated enthusiasm for learning new things, for mas- 
tering problems, for winning a game or a fight. 
How can this spirit be translated into and made 
to permeate our schools of tomorrow? It is the 
purpose of this book to suggest a few possibilities 


74 THE UR BA BOX 


by relating a few facts. First, however, let us visit 
Stockbridge in his den atop that red-tiled roof, 


Ill 


Anyone can read Huxley’s definition of an edu- 
cated man. Any one of us can exclaim, ‘“That’s. 
good!” close the book and feel that we have had 
crystallized for us a real idea. Bob tried to live 
that definition. Never, in so small a space, has there 
been gathered together such a varied miscellany of 
educational paraphernalia as littered and crammed 
his room. I should not say littered, for, with all 
the appearance of utter confusion there was an 
artistry of total effect, the artistry of the born lover 
and collector of things with a common meaning. 

Books were arranged and labeled on his ceiling- 
high shelves as we find them in bookstores: Poetry, 
drama, religion, philosophy, literature, science, 
chemistry. A compound microscope stood by the 
window, a transit in one corner and a punching bag in 
another. ‘Trapeze, rings and a rope ladder hung 
from the ceiling. Dumb-bells, Indian clubs and skip- 
ropes chummed with hiking shoes and sneakers 
under the bed. Colored pictures, a piano, a pho- 
nograph and clay bas-reliefs lent an accent from 
Bohemia to the somewhat Spartan atmosphere of 
strenuous endeavor. Plants flourished in pots by 
the window, and out on the roof. Crystals grew 
in covered glass “gardens,” beautiful fronds and 
galaxies of color, a delight to Bob’s artistic and 


THE REAL ROY 75 


scientific selves alike. Golf-clubs, tennis-racket, ball- 
bat, riding-boots, hiking-staff, compass, camera and 
binoculars showed hard use and loving care, for 
Bob seemed to love his hard, tough, physical, inani- 
mate things as though each were alive and had a 
friendly soul.. Guns and fishing rod alone were 
dusty from disuse. He had graduated from killing 
into photography, and fish took too long a time to 
bite. Hours were golden to Bob. 

He lived mainly on hard whole-wheat bread, 
fruits, nuts, milk and cheese at this time; followed 
Irving Fisher, Chittenden, and Horace Fletcher in. 
dealing with proteins, carbohydrates and fats; neg- 
lected tea, coffee, tobacco and all “food poisons’”’ 
as he called them and followed Epicurus as a dietetic 
guide within this adopted horizon. 

He was, at the time I met him, adolescence per- 
sonified. No problem was insoluble, no difficulty 
but might be overcome, no height could not be 
scaled. Life was an endless row of sweet and va- 
ried nuts, to be cracked and eaten at strenuous 
leisure and with smacking gusto. Yet there were 
limits. Against things which he believed would in- 
terfere with his growth and development, he set 
himself like granite. His buoyant figure and con- 
tagiously radiant smile was conjured up when I read 
William WHard’s generous tribute to Theodore 
Roosevelt in the New Republic of January 25, 
1919, a memorable appreciation of the finer quali- 
ties of the man. I quote a paragraph that mirrors 


76 Bile ROE Net Daal Le ORNS 


Bob’s attitude toward the problem of choice be- 
tween one way of living and another, the key prob- 
lem of adolescence. 


‘He was not simply life’s energy. . . . He was 
the irrelevant curiosity of it and the vagrant wan- 
dering of it and the finding of great magics in it 
and the perpetual amazement of it and its laughter. 
ieee didinot make ‘lifevanvend je Liteston shim 
was nothing but openings beyond, openings to ef- 
fort and chance and the joy of effort and chance, 
joy everlasting. ... He was instinctive energy; 
and he was creative curiosity; and he went on then 
to his greatest greatness. This insatiable taster of 
life never fell into the heresy which damns the taster. 
He knew there were poisons. He set them down 
from his lips. And he knew the pit in which even the 
innocent but indiscriminate thirst for all life and all 
sensation becomes a poisonous quicksand. He leaped 
over it... . He girt himself with choices and de- 
nials. ‘The heresy of self-expression as an end, the 
heresy of self-development as an end, he met and he 
conquered. Having perceived what things make 
life run on in joy forever, even when the joy of the 
runner is gone, he chose such things. ‘Things dif- 
ferent he left. He perceived them, but he left 
them. He had a genius for the whole of life, but 
he had an even greater genius for the wholesome. 
With him one seemed to roam the world without 
limit and yet to return without soil. To be sophisti- 
cated to the very verge of the ultimate human abyss 
and yet to be as clean as a clean animal—that was 
his most extraordinary achievement and his most 
extraordinary legacy in the possibilities of the art of 
living.” 


hie RIGA iB Oy 77 


If Stockbridge was extreme in his aversion to 
‘poisons,’ as in his antipathy to such relatively 
harmless indulgences as coffee and tea, he was at 
least never fanatical over trifles. He had merely 
fixed certain physiological habits, let them sink into 
the unconscious, and forged ahead with more im- 
portant issues in the game of life and of education 
for fuller living. If my friend was a Puritan it was 
in the sense in which Stuart Sherman pictures the 
essential qualities of the Puritan, “dissatisfaction 
with the past, courage to break sharply from it, a 
vision of a better life, readiness to accept a dis- — 
cipline in order to attain that better life, and a 
serious desire to make that better life prevail.” He 
actively incarnated the teaching of Emerson which 
Sherman sees reflected in the vision of all true Puri- 
tan spirit, “its unfailingly positive character; its 
relish for antagonisms and difficulty; its precept for 
the use of the spur; its restoration of ambition to 
its proper place in the formation of manly char- 
acter; its power to free the young soul from the 
fetters of fear and send him on his course like 
a thunderbolt; and above all, its passion for bring- 
ing the whole of life for all men to its fullest and 
fairest fruit.” 


IV 


Bob was a true teacher, and he was free to teach 
what he liked when he wanted to. Like Socrates of 
old, he gathered youngsters around him and fed 


78 Te B Ree AaB Oe 


them upon nuts, raisins, fruits, bread, milk and ideas. 
Disciples gathered about him as they will gather 
around any strong personality with a message in his 
heart. Bob believed he had within him good tidings 
of great joy. He believed not only that, 


‘The days that make us happy make us wise,”’ 


but that the days that make us wise make us happy. 
He had no love for mere knowledge though he did 
feel a keen delight in the power which knowledge 
brings when effectively codrdinated. He was exul- 
tant when an idea which had set his own heart to 
dancing and his very body leaping in the air got 
across from himself to another and kindled the 
sparkle of an eye. Nearly always he followed a new 
idea with the question, ‘“How will it work? What 
can it do? Can we use it?’ We were reading in 
Lyell’s geology one day. He slammed shut the 
book, sprang to his feet, seized me by the collar, 
shoved me through the door and exclaimed: ‘“That’s 
enough reading.) Let's) gol” io Wep hurried tome 
twenty miles into the hill country, scratched and 
dug for hours in sand and among rocks and com- 
pletely forgot our lunch in a quest for fossil bones. 
I returned home that day with a fossil tooth as large 
as my fist in my pocket and with my first con- 
ception of what the word geology really means. 
Besides, I had had a lesson in teacherhood, later 
to be turned to good account among my school- 
boys. 


THE REAL BOY 79 


I felt, as it were, the old spirit of Grecian edu- 
cation breaking down my old idols and replacing 
them with fairer gods. Under its spell I seemed to 
aspire and to grow. Its secret lay in the mysterious 
contagion of individual enthusiasm, of joy in shar- 
ing happy things together. I could envy nothing 
in the disciples of Plato. Bob’s den and the wild 
woodlands of the Cordilleras were as real a school 
to me as any Athenian grove. Schole, leisure, was 
ours, and we drew each other out to our limits 
because our freedom to do so was unbounded. Like 
Voltaire we could ‘‘doubt everything.”’ Like Web- | 
ster we could say, “Lord, I believe, help thou mine 
unbelief!” We rejoiced in both Gladstone and 
Huxley, though we bet on Huxley as the winning 
gladiator. Nothing outside ourselves hampered our 
intellectual growth, governed as it was by our own 
hunger for the mental food we most desired at the 
time. 

Thus, at a rather critical time in my life, I was 
led by an angel, as it were, into temptations of 
physical, mental and spiritual health. ‘The process 
seemed abnormal to Hugh Pollock, and doubtless 
to numbers of our friends. Especially so in the 
realm of sex, for we were at the age when sex 
assumes enormous proportions and often eclipses 
everything else in life. Perhaps these years when 
sex was sublimated so largely into physical and 
mental activity together with a dash of mysticism 
have rendered me too little sympathetic with the 


80 Te REAL iB Ow 


strains and stresses and confusions of young men 
struggling for orientation to life at this period. Yet 
I cannot say that I regret missing those varied and 
colorful experiences which some of my friends of 
those days like to talk about as characteristic of their 
later adolescence. On the whole harmless enough, 
occasionally unhealthy, sometimes tragic; they ap- 
pear to me as relatively valueless in one’s education 
for life, in one’s aim toward happiness in living. 
So too with alcohol, cards and the whole gamut of 
indoor amusements which Rito and I escaped except 
by way of occasional samples. It is not that we 
avoided evils, but rather that we did not waste much 
precious time over things that perhaps should have 
their, place later’ on, in life; if at all: Hugh) Pole 
lock did not become a drunkard or a gambler; but 
it seems to me that he missed some of the intoxi- 
cation of sunrise on a mountain-top which we en- 
joyed while he slept off the physiological results of 
a convivial evening. After all, temptations toward 
good and toward evil will always remain relative and 
their role in our lives is determined by our power 
of choice, or by our habits of choosing. 

This is no place for a discussion of determinism 
and free will. ‘The point of this chapter is that, 
as a teacher, these memories of Mexican days came 
back to me as a stimulus to keep exposing my pupils 
to as many opportunities as possible for doing those 
things which I had learned to enjoy most. The 
majority of these happened fortunately to be in 


eri eh tral eB OY, 81 


accord with accepted educational traditions. Where 
they were not, I suffered some little friction with 
the academic world; but all through these I have 
held my conviction that the only true teaching lies 
in the giving of one’s best as it 1s, without much 
concern about what it should be, judged by other 
standards than one’s own. 


CHAPTER IV 


A GREAT TEACHER WELCOMES ME 


The problem of moral and religious education ts 
whether we can thoroughly civilize our barbaric and 
bestial proclivities and bring them into the harmony 
and unity of completed character. 

—G,. STANLEY HALL. 


1 


AT the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, off the 
coast of Virginia, there lie three things very precious 
to me: the gold medal I won for Deportment at 
Mohegan, my mother’s Bible, and two volumes of 
Stanley Hall’s “Adolescence” replete with juvenile 
marginalia. Just as Herbert Spencer had opened 
Bob’s eyes and mine to the fascinating panorama 
of the universe in process of creation at the hand 
of God; so had ‘‘Adolescence”’ revealed to us un- 
dreamed regions in the mind and soul of man. 
Reading this great book precipitated inside me such 
a chaos of interest, curiosity and inspiration that 
I dropped my job, said good-by to Stockbridge, and 
embarked on the ill-fated steamship Merida for 
another chapter of my education in the United 


States. I was resolved to go to college and then 
82 


ie ha AL iB Oy 83 


do graduate work in psychology under President 
Hall at Clark University. 

About an hour after rereading the final chapter 
in ‘‘Adolescence”’ aboard ship, a small fruit steamer 
rammed its nose into the side of the Merida and 
the treasures I have mentioned, together with the 
rest of my worldly goods, found their last and 
briny resting place. ‘That shipwreck taught me at 
least one lesson very vividly. 

Underscored with red ink in my mother’s Bible 
were the words: “Lay not up for yourselves trea- 
sures upon earth, where moth and rust do corrupt, 
AUdMewoecrcmtiievesmbreake (ny anguystealpay ts 1OL 
where your treasure is, there will your heart be 
also.” J remembered those words as I sat bobbing 
about on the waves of the Atlantic in a small row- 
boat that foggy, choppy night. But my heart re- 
mained with my treasures of earth and was ex- 
ceeding heavy until something happened that 
radically changed my sense of values concerning 
material possessions. It brought a new and bright 
illumination to the thought which Jesus spoke, and 
crystallized it for me as an educational principle. 

About a dozen fellow passengers were huddled 
together with me in the life-boat. The moonlight 
filtered through the fog sufficiently so that I could 
see what a young man beside me was doing with his 
hands. He was scribbling on a page torn from a 
pocket note-book. This he handed me, then struck 
aematch me miread: 


84 CWE a eR ey bees GX 


“My paintings are all on board there. Tell the 
men to row back. Perhaps the Captain will let me 
get them. They are my whole life. I cannot talk 
or hear. Thank you. Wooprow.”’ 


My heart went out to this young artist who 
could not talk or hear, but I had watched our mast- 
head light dip and sway and disappear. I knew 
that his treasure was lost too. I told him, and he 
sank back against the side of the boat with such 
an expression of resignation and pain as only a 
Conrad can describe in words. 

Suddenly I was profoundly conscious of the mean- 
ing of the word relative and its cousin, relativity. 
They are favorite words of Herbert Spencer’s, and 
run through his “Synthetic Philosophy” like red 
beads strung loosely on a string. The immensity 
of the difference between my loss and that of Wood- 
row struck me so forcibly that I remember smiling 
at myself for grieving over so relatively insignifi- 
cant a tragedy as my own. I hope he did not see me 
smile. I wish that I might say that I had asked 
him for his note-book and written: ‘You have lost 
your pictures, but cheer up! You have your art.” 
As it was I sat thinking only of myself, thankful 
that so much of both the lost Bible and the lost 
medal had been stored away in my mind and heart, 
and heart, and that the memory of days of am- 
bition and hope are really sweeter far than a metal 
symbol of their resultant success. 

Are we not here very close to the core of educa- 


LG Hats a RAEO ATs 7B Oye 85 


tion, to the very heart of the school of tomorrow: 
the idea of the relativity of spiritual values? 


II 


Landed safely off the coast of Virginia, I began 
a series of attempts to enter college. Without a 
certificate of graduation from High School, I found 
the task very difficult. Deans were very courteous 
but very firm for requirements. Finally, President 
Sanford, of Clark College, suggested that I call 
upon President Hall, of the University and state 
my case to him. Once or twice a student had been 
admitted to the University on trial, without aca- 
demic credentials. Like one on a dream of finding 
great riches, J rang the doorbell of Doctor Hall’s 
brick house. 

Instead of meeting an eminent authority, a great 
intellect, I found myself chatting freely and com- 
fortably with a most genial and sympathetic soul. 
Diffidence and apprehension vanished from my heart 
at our first handclasp. Worries over schooling and 
college melted miraculously into a vision of the 
possibility of a University career. I was asked 
not for diplomas or credits, but about what I had 
been doing and reading since I left Mohegan; and 
what I wanted most to do. 

‘Come back tomorrow,”’ said the President, ‘‘with 
a written résumé of your personal history, and a 
list of books you have read and are ready to an- 
swer questions about. Perhaps we can admit you 


86 RG RE AT BOY 


to the University on trial. It will then be up to 
you to stay in.” Could there be a more poetic 
justice in the academic world than that? 

An oral examination, conducted privately and in- 
dividually by several professors, and directed along 
lines of my own reading and interests, resulted in 
my admission to the University. I found that its 
principal characteristic was leisure time. There 
was a minimum of lecture and a maximum of time 
to loaf in or to work. Not once did I have to re- 
spond to a roll-call, never did I have to attend a 
lecture or a seminar. There seemed to be no rules 
whatever. There was atmosphere. ‘There was a 
spirit of almost palpable understanding. Students 
were nearly always on time to those lectures which 
they chose to attend. We kept our feet off the 
tables in the library. We worked hard, and al- 
most too constantly. It was up to us to “stay 
in.” It was for me to make good. 

I listened to Hall’s kaleidoscopic lectures, I at- 
tended his stimulating and socratic seminars, joined 
the Dream Club, analyzed my dreams and read the 
books he suggested. It was on our walks, how- 
ever, that I felt the reality of education. We 
walked the hard pavements of Worcester always 
in the direction of grass and trees. He loved to 
feel the pressure of his foot on turf. More than 
once we took off shoes and stockings as though, 
like Antzeus, we might draw strength from our 
mother earth. We swam in ponds and later skated 


THE REAL BOY 87 


on them. We climbed hills, and we lay on our 
backs on fall leaves in the woods. Always we 
chatted, and drew each other out. I believe that 
in these rambles of ours I understood to the full 
the meaning of the words schole and educere from 
which come our school and education! 

So often the philosophy of psychogenesis which 
he had spoken to us from notes in the morning, 
would come bubbling over in boyish fun during 
our play in the afternoon. On the pebbly shore 
of a forbidden pond, lying in the sunshine, I re- 
member his feeling “‘atavistic echoes of our pelagic 
days,” and discoursing on a possible dendropsychosis 
leading us away from the University and into the 
woods. He made me feel that he had never writ- 
ten or spoken about any human quality or variant 
which he had not himself felt, experienced, or very 
personally understood. One of the great open se- 
crets of true teacherhood lies here. 

A still more vital one is the teaching for joy. 
Hall found deep, genuine happiness in passing along 
what he learned, hot from the griddle of his study. 
The spirit of the learner, of the learner for the 
sheer fun of learning and growing was combined 
with the spontaneous urge of the missionary, of the 
man filled full with a message for his fellow kind. 
Or rather, perhaps, as a poet who has to burst 
into song for the same reason that a rosebud un- 
folds its tight petals. 

As a disciple, I was magnetically attracted to 


88 DARIO REE AI BiOvy, 


Stockbridge and to Stanley Hall because they were 
so vibrantly alive, because they were exuberantly 
curious, because they were buoyantly happy in the 
exercise of those faculties which made for the joy 
of growing as well as of being. They incarnated 
in personalities that elemental quality of mankind 
which Sherman calls the modern spirit, “a free 
spirit open on all sides to the influx of truth, even 
from the past . . . marked by an active curiosity, 
which grows by what it feeds upon, and goes ever 
inquiring for fresher and sounder information, not 
content until it has the best. . . . But since it seeks 
the best, it is, by necessity also a critical spirit, con- 
stantly sifting, discriminating, rejecting, and hold- 
ing fast to that which is good, only till that which 
is better is in sight. This endless quest, when it 
becomes central in life, requires labor, requires 
pain, requires a measure of courage; and so the 
modern spirit, with its other virtues, is an heroic 
spirit. As a reward for difficulties gallantly under- 
taken, the gods bestow on the modern spirit a kind 
of eternal youth, with unfailing powers of recupera- 
tion and growth.” 


Ill 


One thing is certain to me regarding any phi- 
losophy or attitude toward life that will lead our 
young folks on toward Stevenson’s “great task of 
happiness.”’ It must be plastic, it must be grow- 
ingly alive, it must be constantly evolving. For 


THE REAL BOY 89 


as Professor Sherman so truly tells us, ‘fa great 
part of our lives, as we all feel in our educational 
period, is occupied with learning how to do and to 
be what others have been and have done before 
us. But presently we discover that the world is 
changing around us, and that the secrets of the 
masters and the experience of our elders do not 
wholly suffice to establish us effectively in our 
younger world. We discover within us needs, aspi- 
rations, powers of which the generation that edu- 
cated us seems unaware, or toward which it ap- 
pears to be indifferent, unsympathetic, or even 
actively hostile. We perceive gradually or with 
successive shocks of surprise that many things which 
our fathers declared true and satisfactory are not 
at all satisfactory, and are by no means true, for 
us. Then it dawns upon us, perhaps as an exhilarat- 
ing opportunity, perhaps as a grave and sobering 
responsibility, that in a little while we ourselves 
shall be the elders, the responsible generation. Our 
salvation in the day when we take command will 
depend, we believe, upon our disentanglement from 
the lumber of heirlooms and hereditary devices, and 
upon the free, wise use of our own faculties.”’ 
President Hall, whom I knew during the last 
years of his life, seemed to me to retain this spirit 
of‘eternal youth. He reminded me of Gladstone 
who, at eighty-three, turned upon a Parliament of 
old men and said: “I represent the youth and hope 
of England. The solution of these questions of the 


90 Tae tREAL -BOv 


future belongs to us who are of the future, and 
not to you who are of the past.” In his later seven- 
ties, Doctor Hall felt much the same toward time, 
and wrote: “If my intellectual interests have been 
in the past and present, my heart lives in the future 
and in this sense I am younger than youth itself, 
the nature of which I would chiefly understand and 
appeal to.’ He gave.us, his pupils, a comprehensive 
set of tests or questions by which to roughly evalu- 
ate our own characters first, and then to apply to 
others if we would. These tests struck directly 
through all formality of learning and touched one’s 
plasticity for growth, one’s youth and aspiration of 
spirit. Note how very little they have to do with 
knowledge, and how much they deal with wisdom: 

How easily can you move up and down the plea- 
sure-pain scale so as not to be unduly exalted by 
success, or lose the power to react from disaster 
(which is the supreme lesson of the Cross and the 
Resurrection) ? 

What is your mobility up and down the age-scale, 
so as to keep in sympathetic touch with childhood, 
youth and those undeveloped, and also anticipate 
the lessons of old age? 

How far are you aggressive, independent, eager 
for and capable of leadership on the one hand; or 
born and taught only to serve and follow, on the 
other? 

How does your narrowness, selfishness and ego- 
ism compare with your wider interests in others, in 


WHE eRe A LT BOW gl 


causes, in the greater concerns of the community, 
state, nation and the world? 

How far is your sexual life controlled and subli- 
mated? 

How much do you love nature, the root of all 
natural sciences, literature and art? 

What are the number, direction and strength of 
your dominant interests, and how do you spend 
your leisure time? 

Are your instinctive feelings toward religion, so- 
cial, political and industrial institutions radical or 
conservative ? | 

How do you feel toward your own honesty, truth- 
fulness and perseverance? How far can you draw 
upon reserve moral energies without a collapsing 
reaction afterwards? What is the degree of vitality 
still left to you from the momentum of heredity? 


Kipling has condensed the substance of most of 
these questions into his immortal “If.’’ When the 
subject of mental tests has come up among my older 
boys at school, I have referred them to this chal- 
lenging poem as a broader and deeper test of per- 
sonal values than any intellectual tests as yet de- 
vised. The chief lesson of my university career, 
and my association with Stanley Hall was that of 
the comparative importance of intellect and feeling 
in education for life. Intellect as an instrument of 
life itself within us, knowledge as a means toward 
life more abundant; feeling expressed in action as the 


92 VEE RIB AY OB OY 


true test of human values; these were new ideas to 
me. I began, at the university, amongst a world of 
books and lectures, to learn why “Knowledge is 
proud that it knows so much, wisdom is humble that 
it knows no more.” Psychology became for me not 
so much a study of mental processes in the labora- 
tory, but of soul processes in everyday life. Within 
the very walls of a room devoted to research in the 
minutiz of intellectual processes, I became a be- 
haviorist at heart. I emerged into a world of 
schoolboys quite convinced that, at least in my 
own day and generation, the soul would not be 
caught and measured and tabulated in the labora- 
tory. For me it still walked abroad, free and alive 
and smiling amusedly at ergographs, stop-watches, 
red and green lights, revolving cylinders and even 
at the metaphysical dissection of its dreams. 

And so, years later, despite the varied progress 
that has been made in so many branches of psychol- 
ogy, I review some personal experiences with boys 
as their teacher, still believing that when I use the 
word “‘boy-soul’”’ I am dealing with a reality, and 
not a myth! 


CHAPTER V 


SOME BOY THOUGHTS ABOUT THEIR 
TEACHERS 


I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude 
truth in all ways. My life is not an apology, but a 
life. Do your thing and I shall know you. Your 
genuine action will explain itself and will explain 
your other genuine actions. Let us bow down and - 
apologize never more! 


—EMERSON. 
I 


AFTER running about over this broad America 
of ours attempting to lecture on such vast themes 
as “Heredity and Eugenics,” I settled down at last 
to a round or two of hard intellectual sparring at 
History and English, with a bunch of boys. 

Intervale was a school of tomorrow in embryo. 
Like so many human institutions it was largely the 
shadow of one dominant personality. ‘There lay its 
great initial strength and also its fatal weakness. 
Its founder was essentially a pioneer, not a settler. 
Inspiring as a promoter and organizer, as an ad- 
ministrator his vision too far outran its possibilities 
of realization. Restlessly energic, tending half a 
dozen irons in the fire at once, he trusted to the 
initial velocity which his hands had given it to carry 

93 


94 THE REAL. BOY 


the school straight on to its shining goal. It was 
as though he had laid an egg which needed his 
own warmth for hatching, and had then left it to a 
brood of foster parents relatively cold-blooded and 
each intent more upon his own individual aims than 
upon the triumph of the school. When he returned 
among the boys and their teachers the egg seemed 
to warm appreciably and one might hear a gentle 
pecking inside the crusting shell. One dreamed for 
the moment of the possible fulfillment of a cherished 
ideal. The impress of his frequent visits was tonic, 
but it was not lasting. ‘The school as an institution 
died finally, in infancy. Its spirit, however, is im- 
mortal. | 

Refitting the world to human nature. Refitting 
the school to the boy and girl. ‘Trusting youth where 
we did not understand it. To walk with rather than 
to lead our children on what Buddha called the 
upward path. To move forward, instead of back, to 
Jesus. To learn the law of the heart, “love,7-and 
the law of the will “serve.” To teach boys to live. 
That “to plow is to pray, to plant is to prophesy 
and that the harvest answers and fulfills.”’ These 
were a few of the ideas and ideals to which a hand- 
ful of human beings of the species teacher were set 
to living out in practice among a lot of none too 
gentle boys! 

A square mile of rolling farmland, a marvelously 
beautiful grove of maple and beech and oak, log 
classrooms and cabins and gymnasium, a sparkling. 


AHI TRB ATI B OvY 95 


lake dropped like a jewel into a setting of green 
woodland; these were our physical heritage. Cows, 
horses, chickens, ducks, turkeys, dogs, sheep and 
even parrots and monkeys lived among us. Flower- 
beds and rose-clambered pergolas threw wondrous 
colors across our way. Equipment for farming, for 
gardening, for scientific work, music and art was 
generously supplied. A physical paradise for the 
boy. Let us meet a few of the lads who lived in the 
little cabins, sprinkled along the shore of our shin- 
ing Silver Lake. 

First my pupil Agpawan, for this young shoot 
from a tribe of Bontoc-Igorote head-hunters of the 
Philippines wanted to become a teacher, and this 
chapter is to reflect a few boy viewpoints upon this 
calling. Agpawan, a lad of fifteen or so, was one of 
those who are inwardly oriented, who look into 
their own hearts and try to find what is there. A 
poet, too, though not often in metered words. A 
little brown man of steel muscles and an almost 
perpetual smile a-twinkle in his round eyes and play- 
ing at the corners of his mouth. One day he handed 
me a creased and fingered leaf from a composition 
notebook. It was somewhat fuzzy with that dusty 
grayness which inevitably accumulates in the pockets 
of a boy. In crawly, painstaking hand he described 
himself standing in a doorway of his cabin, pausing 
a moment to look out at the world before starting 
for the barn to milk the cows. A gray beech tree 
grew beside his doorstep. Against its trunk he had 


96 cee ROE ALL BOY 


rested a friendly hand while it seemed to speak to 
him like this: 


‘‘Agpawan, I see you go out every day somewhere. 
Where do you go?’ What do you do? I have been 
in roots here all my life. I wonder what you people 
do who can move about and go from places to places 
here and there. Agpawan, tell me please about 
those things that do happen over the hill where you 
go in the morning.” 


He told the tree, in better English than many of 
_ his American schoolfellows could write, that he went 
across the hill to work and that he liked his work. 
There was a suspicion of tears in his eyes as he 
handed me this composition, and after I had read it 
he said to me: “Maestro, I am very stupid. My 
brain does not work. Something must be wrong 
with my mind. I cannot seem to study hard enough. 
What is the matter with me?” 

A few minutes’ conversation revealed to me what 
was the matter with Agpawan. Rising at four- 
thirty, he walked a mile to the barn, milked eight 
cows and then walked back to breakfast. He studied 
and attended classes, with an hour for lunch, until 
four in the afternoon. Then he worked with his 
hands until six. Two hours of study after supper 
followed by an attempt to sleep without sufficient 
covering for warmth completed the reasons for his 
feeling very stupid. When I revised his schedule of 
working hours he felt better physically, but he was 
ambitious without limit and his spirit drooped a bit. 


THE REAL BOY 97 


Agpawan’s muscles seemed to ache for work as his 
mind thirsted for knowledge and his soul hungered 
for God. “I have found America so good,” he said, 
“that I want to tell my people about it. I want to 
teach 

I met him first with the thrashing gang in the barn- 
yard. The boys were pitching shocks of wheat from 
wagons in to the thumpy engines, bagging the ripe 
brown grain in burlap sacks and stowing it away in 
the feed room. Prickly wheat barbs migrated down 
their backs to nestle at the belt line in itchy discom- 
fort. J took my turn at work with them and watched 
Aggie’s bare brown muscles knotting, sliding, tens- 
ing, relaxing with all the ease and quickness of a 
squirrel and the grace of a mountain cat. His white 
teeth flashed smiles at me as I passed by, and I felt 
that I had discovered a rare soul. I knew that there 
was one boy at least who felt the spiritual purpose of 
the school, to teach boys to live through learning 
the real joy that lies in hard work of hand and arm 
as well as brain. Agpawan responded to every job 
with a smile, and he seemed firmly to believe that 
each task was designed for a specific purpose in his 
evolution into a teacher. His conception of teacher- 
hood was Oriental and his ambition, i, was 
pitched very high. 

The word teacher meant Master (maestro) to 
this boy. It had no savor of the pedagogue, defined 
in Webster under.number 1 as “‘a slave who led his 
master’s children to school and had charge of them 


98 THE REAL) BOY 


generally.” The Greek pedagogues, you will re- 
member, had often to drive their master’s children 
home from school with a rod, so happy were the 
children of those days to be at school at all. Ag- 
pawan would have found it hard to believe Mr. 
Wells, who declares that ‘“‘by the standard of what 
she might be, America is an uneducated country.” 
He had come to the Promised Land of his dreams. 
Surely teachers here belonged to one of the special- 
ized and learned professions, as in India where one 
must qualify for this work by nobility of birth, dig- 
nity of conduct, faith in God and knowledge of the 
ways of the world. A true teacher, Pavananthi tells 
us, should be as solid as the earth, precious with 
mental treasures as is a mountain with silver and 
gold, impartial as the needle of a balance, and as 
agreeable as a full blown flower. It was quite won- 
derful to think that even one boy believed in you 
like that! 

His fellow students did not all agree with Agpa- 
wan about teachers and teaching. One of them, 
Lilly, did not like me. I long wondered why. One 
day I found relief in a fragment of his conversation 
with Hartman, for I discovered that I was not alone 
in his disfavor. Said he: ‘Well, Shafer may be all 
right, but he’s a teacher. ,They’re all alike, one 
breed, like this or that kind of dog. You can tell 
"em a mile off. Some better than others, but they’re 
all hypocrites and they’re all sort of female. Maybe 
women teachers are all right, but teaching’s no job 


Dre eRe RAAT.» B Oxy, 99 


foraman. Just telling kids what to do and bossing 
them around. It’s probably because they can’t boss 
men. Cheap lot. If they ought to get more money, 
like Krupp says, why don’t they go make it instead 
of sticking to their soft jobs? [ll be so damn glad 
when I get through this school that I'll bust.” 

A gentle psychoanalysis of Lilly would probably 
reveal a sensitive spot perhaps due to a scolding, or 
a licking, or a bit of sarcasm which so often hurts 
harder and more lastingly than corporal punishment 
or direct reprimand. But Lilly was no fit subject 
for analysis. He slid from under questions like an 
oiled eel. His defensive carapace against the friend- 
liest approach on the part of his teachers was as 
hard and tight as the shell of a box-turtle. I do not 
think one of us got a look at anything but Lilly’s 
crust during the whole time he was with us. 

Heth liked me well enough, but he seemed to pity 
me, too. AA tall, lithe, husky Nordic with muscles 
toughened on shipboard and a mind swung to the 
practical issues of making a living and getting ahead, 
Heth had returned to schooling after a few years 
in the world of work and men. He loved to swing 
an ax, lift barrels, push heavy loads and box with 
his equals or betters in the ring. 

“Don’t you get tired of teaching?” he asked me 
one day. “It would be just plain everlasting hell to 
me to sit around like you do among us kids. Don’t 
you ever want to try anything else?” 

“Tve bossed peons on a railroad,” I replied, ‘‘and 


100 SESW O VI DUAN ites O TN ¢ 


drawn pictures for catalogues. I’ve collected bills 
for a printer, cashiered for a maker of wagons, sold 
automobiles, peddled opals, run a small general 
store, tried bookkeeping for a mine and secretarying 
toa Bishop. I’ve runa cotton-waste mill, sold stocks 
and bonds for a bank, measured logs in a lumber- 
mill, edited a magazine for girls, reported and writ- 
ten editorials for a newspaper, lectured to Rotary 
and women’s clubs and now I am here at a job I 
really like.” 

“Well, I don’t get you at all. I should think that 
when you got shipwrecked on your way to become 
a teacher, you’d have taken that as a sign you ought 
to stick to business. I like this school. I suppose 
we fellows have got to have teachers, but how a man 
like you, who can do something else for a living, can 
stick around these classrooms cramming a lot of 
roughnecks for exams, well, it beats me.”’ 


} 


II 


I thought of Halley, our instructor in physics, a 
triumphant and yet a tragic epitome of conscientious 
teacherhood. He had taught for twenty-five years. 
With a wholesome spirit, a purpose integrated and 
clear, his methods were sound, his results apparent 
and lasting. In modern business his energy, intelli- 
gence and practical ability would have led him into 
marked success. He became and remained a suc- 
cessful teacher. When apart from the boys, how- 


Ler eR AT B Ovy. 101 


ever, his naturally buoyant optimism seemed tinged 
- with a dash of bitterness always. There was a note 
of tragedy in his frequent half sigh, half exclama- 
Clone SoawW owe Gees. Oh iwellwuens 
Ah! I heard them through his door as I passed, 
and sometimes when he walked down the hall. An 
infrequent visitor, he was always warmly welcomed 
as a guest. One evening he almost relaxed and felt 
at home by my wife’s cozy fireside. 

‘“We need a new children’s crusade,”’ he remarked. 
“fA new children’s crusade, with banners flying and 
voices shouting for new men, live men, men of action 
behind the teacher’s desk. We need a general strike 
of the children to convince the powers above us 
that education needs a revolutionary change in the 
personnel of its teacherhood. No new methods, no 
new theories, no new experiments. We need new 
‘men and new women in positions of educational 
power. We need a new quality and caliber of 
teacher. . . . But what’s the use talking about these 
things? A crusade or a children’s strike! Pshaw! 
Fudge! May we have a little music this evening?” 

He ran a gnarled and acid-stained hand through 
his silver-white hair, stroked a somewhat bristly 
chin, shifted his feet to greater comfort and forgot 
his bitter-sweet conflict with life in the measures of 
Kreisler’s Rondino on a theme from Beethoven. 

Perhaps Halley was thinking about our colleague, 
Krupp, when he spoke of a general strike. I passed 
Don Romero’s cabin by starlight late one autumn 


102 ly, Aree B7Acis BOY: 


evening and stopped to look in at the window. 
Four boys sat around a pine table, their unpolished 
boots upon it and their chairs tilted back at com- 
fortable angles against the walls. ‘[ext-books were 
strewn on the floor among empty cracker-packages, 
football gear and snoozing dogs. ‘Three of the 
boys chewed gum and one munched tobacco, spit- 
ting out the window opposite mine. ‘Their conversa- 
tion made me feel that I was myself an accursed 
eavesdropper. 

‘“T feel good toward Cal even if he does teach 
math. He makes me feel as though I was some- 
body. But Krupp gets my goat. Always rubbering 
around as though you were doing what you oughtn’t. 
I don’t mind him when he jumps on me, but I hate 
like the devil to be spied on.” 

Which reminded me of a remark of Krupp’s at 
faculty meeting: ‘‘Nine out of ten of these boys hate 
me. That’s because I jump on them so much. Got 
to have discipline on the place. ‘They may hate me 
now, but they’ll appreciate me some day. ‘That’s 
what a teacher is up against.” 

The four boys had stopped studying in books and 
were discussing life, educating each other, drawing 
each other out. They were sacrificing the accumula- 
tion of knowledge for a growth in wisdom and 
understanding. ‘Their gossip about us teachers was 
an organic lesson in psychology, in man’s relation to 
the world and to his neighbor. I listened for a while 
and then wandered back into the night glad that the 


THE REAL BOY 103 


boys were spending an evening like that. Had 
Krupp listened, instead of me, I wonder if he would 
have learned the why of the boys’ “hatred” which 
lay not in his discipline but in his distrust. 

Boys will stand a lot of discipline, a lot of “jump- 

ing on” and “bawling out’ and much hard work at 
disagreeable tasks so long as things are straight. 
When they go crooked, boyhood justly revolts. I 
remember finding the corners of Ryan’s lips so far 
turned down one day that I stopped and asked him 
what was wrong. Instead of an answer, I was in- 
volved in an explosion. 
« “Aw! this isn’t school, it’s jail. My dad pays out 
good money just so’s I can work my way through this 
outfit. Haven’t learned a thing today but that ashes 
blow in your face when you dump them off a wheel- 
barrow. Then they lie so about our work. Look 
at the movies they took of us in white clothes down 
at the barn. When do we ever wear white clothes 
except for a picture? And driving cows to pasture 
on horseback! ‘They ought to take our pictures 
plowing through the mud on foot like we usually go. 
Hell! (pardon me) Gosh! isn’t it enough to make 
a guy sore the way they lie about you?” 

Years later I had a letter from Ryan in which he 
said that Intervale days were the happiest of his 
life. He looked back upon hard work at wheel- 
barrow and ax as the best of all his lessons; yet 
who knows what an impress was made upon his 
outlook upon the world of school or business in 


104. EY “REBCALIOY Bir Y: 


terms of honor and of truth? At heart a boy is a 
fundamentalist. To make an opportunist takes time. 


III 


Our principal was one of those many heads of 
American schools who are completely dominated by 
the academic powers above, against whom Halley 
had suggested a children’s crusade, or a general 
strike. He ruled our faculty-meetings from behind 
a wooden box filled with cards in alphabetical order 
on which were recorded the names and the academic 
standing of the boys. His aim was college exams. 
We discussed the contents of these cards when we 
should have been asking ourselves, about the boys, 
such questions as Stanley Hall used to put to us 
would-be teachers: 


What will help the boy find his pleasures in the 
things that are normal and wholesome and truly 
happy? 


What will help him to control, direct, sublimate 
passion? What are those things which furnish him 
mere subtle excuses for such self-indulgence as re- 
duces his own best tone? 


What will help him to fear aright, to hate aright, 
to wholesomely fear those things that make him less 
a man; to hate and to be ready to fight those things 
which to him can be classified as evil? 


Instead, the grind of figures and percentages went 
on while I wrote letters, Halley dreamed of his fire- 


Ey REA OBR Oy: 105 


place and his books, and Dominguez, teacher of 
Spanish, dozed and sometimes snored. 

Dominguez was one of those travesties of teacher- 
hood whom the boys called a ‘‘skunk.”’ 

{ was glad to note that, when this Spaniard left 
us, no one missed him. He had made no friends 
among the boys. His time with us had been brief 
and his influence had been hardly felt. He was 
succeeded by Senor Elie, a soft but refined and 
gentlemanly creature, so full of bookish information 
and so ready to dispense it that he reminded me 
of one of those big bellied bugs who hang themselves 
up that their luscious juices may be sucked out 
by their young for nutriment. A veritable Tomlin- 
son in referring to books and authors, authorities 
and precedents, he was yet so genial in his erudition 
that we all forgave him his bibliomania. His total 
contrast to Dominguez set him high in the estimation 
of the boys, who took to walking with him in our 
woodland and listening to such book-talk as only a 
Thomas Mosher could spray forth in tumbling 
words. In classes he was all for conjugating irreg- 
ular verbs, mastering grammatical pin-points and 
pronouncing only in purest Castilian; but the ex- 
uberant delight in his work, together with a ready 
sympathy for slow-plodding and forgetful youth won 
him a place in every lad’s heart. We felt that we 
had another real teacher among us. 

He, however, considered his work done in the 
classroom, and in his informal chats with the boys. 


106 TE REA (BO Y. 


He thought that digging in the ground, wielding an 
ax, hammering spikes, pushing wheelbarrows and 
cutting ice on the lake were things to ‘“‘hire done by 
folk of less sensitive nerves than a teacher should 
have’ as he put it. He feared a slave-mindedness 
from labor and was freely frank as to his thoroughly 
aristocratic taste and practice. He stood beside me 
on the snowy shore of our lake one day during the 
ice-harvest. Pointing to Restrepo, who had come to 
us recently from an eminent and wealthy family in 
South America, he remarked: ‘‘Why should he be 
slaving like that? He should have enough exercise 
in the gymnasium. He should devote himself to his 
lessons, not to manual labor. He is to be a capi- 
talist, not a peon!”” Queer blind-spot in Senor Elie’s 
mind. The blind-spot of hereditary kings, priests, 
and sadly, too, of many an industrialist today. Per- 
haps of most teachers, too, who have not yet learned 
the vital relation of the hand and the larger muscle- 
groups to the discipline and training of the mind. 
To me it was a treat to behold that stalwart 
young man, whose acquaintance with snow and ice 
had been only that of long range vista of white- 
capped mountains, out upon our lake driving a team 
of horses to block out the winter’s supply of ice. 
Agpawan, coatless, hatless and sweating worked 
along beside him, shoveling off the snow with all 
the abandon of harvesting rice underneath a South 
Pacific sun. Wayang from Luzon, and Castillo from 
Cuba pushed and pulled with the iron-hooked poles, 


CHG RIA VB OY | 107 


jostling recalcitrant cakes along to the waiting chain. 
Ice-cutting thrilled us all with the joy of long, hard 
team-work. Teacher and pupil, Nordic and Asiatic, 
Canadian and South American, we all worked 
shoulder to shoulder on a mental and spiritual level 
as straight and even as the ice upon which we planted 
our felted rubber boots. We were one, for a while, 
in the sweat of our faces and backs. We smiled at 
each other in the spirit of Stevenson’s: *‘I know what 
true happiness is, for I have done good work.” 
After every classroom lesson is utterly forgotten, 
those boys will remember the purple shadows of our 
beech trees on the snow when we sawed, shoveled, 
pushed, pulled and lifted ice together on the frozen 
lake. 

The boys’ attitude toward Elie was summed up 
for me one day when Jobbie and Mack were unload- 
ing a freight-car of coal as he passed by on his 
afternoon walk. 

‘“Well, we have a damsite more fun than he does 
out of life. Here we shovel coal until it makes us 
feel good and we want to go swimming, and along 
he comes, lamps the car and stands there as though 
he was thinking mighty hard. ‘Isn’t it wonderful,’ 
he says, ‘how man has improved transportation? If 
that car were a foot wider and two feet lower it 
would do better work still.’ It must be the devil to 
live in your upper story like that all the time, just 
thinking about things instead of doing them.” 

I thought, as I heard Mack reciting this fragment 


108 AE Pe RAs: Cay 


of experience to Lilly, of Bernard Shaw’s remark 
about ‘‘those who can do; those who can’t teach.”’ I 
thought, too, of Leonardo da Vinci and his group 
of devoted pupils, of the great artists of the Renais- 
sance and their apprentices. It seemed to me that 
today, as well as in those times, it is largely those 
who do that teach and that even in our schools it is 
actions, not words alone, that educate our boys and 
girls. I liked, at that time, to think of the teacher 
as an artist. I used to say to myself of teaching 
what Napoleon said of power: “It is as an artist that 
I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to 
draw out of it sounds and chords and harmonies.” 
Then I would catch a fleeting remark from one of 
the boys and fall, for the moment, into one of those 
bluely pessimistic spells which I imagined possessing 
Halley when he sighed out his periodic ‘Fudge !”’ 


IV 
The boys liked old Socrates and his method of 


questioning everything. Sometimes our discussions 
became merely scholastic argumentation about the 
donkey between two hay-stacks, but as a rule I felt 
that intellectual tennis, with a question for ball, 
proved excellent exercise for memory and imagina- 
tion. Acting as referee, however, placed me in the 
position of Abelard, who as a teacher would 
allow the presentation of both sides of a question, 
leaving it to his pupils to make their own decisions. 


Aer How R BAYT BOY 109 


Of him, when he appeared in our review of classic 
teachers, my agile-minded little Gilmer had said: 
‘Gee, that bird was as bad as the ‘Literary Digest!’ ” 

Medieval teachers, men of action like Leonardo 
and St. Dunstan pleased the boys better. Herman, 
our metal-smith, embodied something of their spirit. 
His classroom made me think of pictures I have seen 
of the workshop of Benvenuto Cellini. I have 
often wished, when visiting our public schools, that I 
might live to see the day when every one of them 
would possess such a clanging studio. 

Temperamental, too, was Herman. 

How vividly I recall the day when Castillo, a 
Cuban lad and perfect gentleman, brought to my 
den a copper frame enclosing the portrait of a 
beautiful Spanish girl. Would I help him etch a 
pictographic story of his trip from Cuba to America 
upon the frame? We worked out and sketched on 
a symboled story, and I went with the lad to Her- 
man’s shop for asphalt and acid. Upon learning 
our purpose that muscular smith turned upon me 
with fiery eloquence: 

‘I haf for many years run dis shop by myself and 
God! I can still run it without help from outside. 
What all dis about symbals? De boys are crazy 
about de symbals. Why not go on with my shop as 
usual? Iam here de boss, and I will here remain de 
boss!” 

Before I was out of ear-shot, I caught part of a 
sequel to this declamation. Kitty, my wife, had 


110 Tee | RA AGE BB OLY) 


asked permission to fashion a bowl some days before, 
and had been ostensibly welcome. But Herman: 

‘‘Dese damn wimmims! Dey belongs at home. 
My wife only is welcome here, and only when I tell 
her to. What has wimmims to do with metal-craft ? 
This is artistic. It is for wimmims to cook and to 
upkeep their houses, not to be artists. Why in God 
do these professors’ wives everywhile butt into my 
shop ?”’ 

Herman was doubtless right. Yet both Kitty and 
I delighted in sampling everything that went on in 
our school community, and I enjoyed working with 
the boys upon their copper, silver, oak and pine. 
The trouble was I could no more conform than could 
they. We had ideas of our own. ‘They did not fit 
the rut. Ergo, troubles. Troubles mostly, however, 
which time turned into grins. 

If only corporal punishment had been allowed to 
each teacher instead of being reserved as a special 
privilege for our principal, how Herman would 
have swung the birch! He ached to castigate young 
rebels with views of their own, or small devilkins 
who called him “Charlie the Blacksmith.” For it 
was a metal-smith he was! He worked in silver, and 
sometimes in gold. The pride of a guild craftsman 
was his and the impudence of American youth was a 
constant crown of thorns upon his old-world brow. 
His symbol might well have been that of certain 
medieval pedagogues, a bundle of castigatory 
rods! One such master, says the history of peda- 


CUTE RIBAS LT BOW III 


gogy, left a record of no less than 911,000 canings, 
121,000 floggings, 136,000 tips with the ruler, 
10,200 ear-boxings, 700 boys condemned to stand 
on peas and 500 to wear fools’ caps. I could well 
imagine Herman jotting down his flagellations at 
the close of a successful day of discipline! How- 
ever, the poor man had to be content with the words 
of his mouth to express the tumult of his soul. 
Herman reminded me of one of those queer little 
stunted evergreens which Japanese merchants place | 
so temptingly in shop windows. He was an artist 
who never grew up. All the temperament, all the 
patient persistence, much of the technical skill of 
fingers and arm and not a little of that mysterious, 
undefinable creative spirit that makes the true artist 
was his; yet growth had ceased and he had become 
at his best a fair metal-smith, and a good teacher. 
Perhaps it was because he had ceased to develop 
that he remained so good a teacher as he was! 
Herman was a teacher whose arm was eternally 
busy, whose body never seemed to rest, who aimed 
at perfection and whose soul was constantly in pain 
because perfection persisted in eluding his grasp. 
He taught by sheer force of deed. For the young- 
sters he sometimes did too much, so restless was he 
for shop production. A miniature Benvenuto 
Cellini, he raged and roared at error, at slipshod 
work, at thoughtless mistakes. Yet his enthusiastic 
praise of good work was just as vehement and the 
boys were seldom weary of well-doing. His instruc- 


hie hehe Ra Es Bo Oy; 


tions were hurled in every direction at once through 
a windmill of energetic gesticulation. I always 
feared for boy skulls within range of his whirling 
hammer, yet [ have no record of casualties in his 
domain, save when self-inflicted, as when acid spilled 
or a file slipped meanly upon a thumb. The prod- 
ucts of his shop were multitudinous bits of copper 
ugliness, match-boxes, ink-wells, paper-knives, ciga- 
rette-trays and lamp shades with occasional redemp- 
tion in the form of a graceful hand-hammered bowl. 
I always rejoiced in the work, however, for the boys 
got acquainted with their hands as instruments of 
concrete production. They learned how hard metal 
can be tamed into submission. ‘They lived in the age 
of iron and bronze for a time. 


V 


Dad Haydn ruled in the wood-shop next door to 
Herman’s forge. Dad worked as continuously, 
strove just as hard for perfection, was just as scru- 
pulous and exacting; but he lived by rule of love for 
boys made manifest in perhaps all too patient rea- 
soning with error. Bringing with him from Sweden 
a long tradition of the cabinet-making art, he 
mourned our slipshod American handiwork with its 
opportune practicalness and avoidance of delicate 
finish. On his wall hung the motto: 


‘In the elder days of art, 
Builders wrought with greatest care 
Each minute and unseen part 
For the gods see everywhere.” 


fetishes Ado eB ONY; 113 


Fine stuff for the few boys with artistic patience 
under their skins; but almost as unpractical as danc- 
ing to Bach for the average kid who wanted to make 
a shelf for his books, or a chair for his cabin, or a 
trap for a woodland rabbit. I remember when Zwick 
told Dad he wanted to make a chair. Dad began 
by showing the boy how mortices are made, pointing 
out seams that only a practiced eye would discover. 
He then set the boy to work planing a piece of oak 
down to an appointed pencil mark. Zwick spent an 
afternoon on that single piece of oak. He then 
figured how many hours it would take to make his 
chair. That evening he slipped into the commissary 
cellar, stole a prune-box and a soap-box, borrowed a 
hammer and a handful of nails from Kitty, found a 
plain pine board, and before taps had blown he 
was sitting in a fairly comfortable chair. The old 
world against the new! Art versus immediate 
achievement. With all due respect and admiration 
for the joyous work of the maker of fine cabinets, 
and with all sympathy for thoroughness in handi- 
craft, my heart went out to the boy who wanted a 
chair, and who snatched a short cut to the realization 
of his desire! 

Isamu seemed sent across the ocean for color and 
accent to our curious school community at Intervale. 
Bright of mind as a first-water diamond, strong as 
a steel spring, afire with ambition to learn to do 
things well; he was a pupil whom any teacher would 
welcome as an inspiration to his art. 


II4 THE READ BOY. 


One day he brought to my den a box of Japanese 
wood-carving tools, handmade and well worn, as 
though by years of hard use. ‘I want to make a set 
of spoons and forks from a block of chestnut,” he 
said. “I have my tools and know how to work with 
them; but Dad Haydn says I must first learn to plane 
a board with an American plane in his shop. He 
says that is the way to learn technique, and that all 
the boys must start wood-work in this way. He 
looked at my tools and smiled, as though they were 
only a curiosity and fit for a museum.” 

My heart was immediately with the boy instead 
of with my colleague of the faculty. I led Isamu 
down to our cabin-camp by the lakeside, emptied a 
small commissary shack of its impedimenta, helped 
the boy set up a work-bench and established a work- 
shop competitive to Dad’s. Here I hoped the boys 
would come to see Isamu use his tools in his own 
way. His handiwork, as evidenced by a small Jap 
god carved from olive-wood, was full of excellent 
promise. 

The boy’s attitude was that of the artist, the crea- 
tor. It was with his attitude that, as a teacher, I 
felt called upon to deal. My job was to give desire 
and impulse toward art an opportunity for expres- 
sion. Given scope and room, I could leave it then 
to work out its own salvation. Of course this prin- 
ciple is common practice in many of our schools to- 
day; but it was new to me then, an experiment, an 
adventure. 


ee Ra HATS vy) 115 


A true teacher must keep sensitive to the view- 
point of youth. He must keep flexible and able to 
slide from the attitude of the adult teacher versed 
in the lore of this, and in the technique of that, over 
into the outlook of the boy or girl who has little 
more than a specific desire for a thing or things. 
And yet, realizing this, I found myself slipping now 
and then too far back into my own childhood, and 
failing to draw my boys up to and keep them on such 
maturer levels as they were really ready for. I now 
see a hundred places where my sympathy for boy- 
hood’s wishful point of view has led me to neglect 
that timely boost, that helpful upward pull which 
would have helped a youngster feel a notch of 
growth nicked into his staff of life. Still, 1 am glad 
to believe that I erred on this side of the educational 
ledger rather than on the other. For while I may 
sometimes have failed at a critical moment to lift a 
boy beyond himself, at least I can remember but 
few times when I exercised those all too facile 
powers of repression, those stultifying arrogancies 
of authority which it is so easy for teacherhood to 
assume in self-defense against, and sometimes in 
ageressive attack upon rebellious youth. And as for 
my ephemeral troubles with colleague or principal 
or patron or owner, they are all now stowed away 
in the comic supplement of memory, to be glanced 
at with a smile. 


116 "Teta te Ass: BB OCy 


VI 


Halley taught chemistry as well as physics. The 
boys liked and admired him. They were somewhat 
afraid of him, too. Not much was “put over’ him 
in class. He made moral issues of honor and recti- 
tude and his approach was like that of Major 
Waters, at Mohegan, of whom he reminded me 
often. One day I overheard the following conversa- 
tion between McGee and Paulsen. 

“We were reducing lead oxide to metal in our 
crucibles this morning. Bill had some lead shot in 
his pocket. He passed it around. When Halley 
came to look, there was the lead, all fine and shiny. 
He said: “There, boys, patience and persistence is all 
that is required, just as I told you. Patience and 
persistence always bring results.’ And all the while 
it wasn’t patience but birdshot.”’ 

I told the boys that I had overheard their conver- 
sation in the hall. I told them that I did not believe 
they were dishonest, but that their fun had not been 
quite square. ‘They were not in the mood, however, 
for an ethical discussion. The boys knew what 
Halley would say and do if he discovered their | 
prank. I assured them that I would say not a word 
to Halley, or to anyone, but that I wished them to 
think about another side of this event besides its 
fun. Later Paulsen asked if he might relate a dream 
he had had the night before. In this dream, he said, 
he had found himself trying to discover a language 


PUPA REP NAA? Bi@O-Y 117 


which neither God nor Jesus could understand in 
order that he might swear in it without risk of 
punishment. 

“When I’m awake,” he said, “of course I don’t 
believe you go to hell for swearing, nor for putting 
birdshot into lead oxide. I think hell is inside of 
you when you go wrong, and you've got to decide 
when you’re wrong by yourself. I don’t think the 
birdshot was very wrong because it was just in fun. 
If Halley found it out and said ‘damn’ it wouldn’t 
be wrong for him either, because he would have been 
mad when he said ‘damn.’ I guess he would be 
right about our being wrong, but I guess we’re right 
about our being right because it was a joke.”’ Thus 
spoke boyhood, and the gong rang in the hallway. 
I wondered what Halley would have thought about 
Pauley’s dream and its consequent philosophy. My 
thoughts wandered back to the moralizing of gang 
days in Mexico! 

Halley taught the boys better English than could 
I. Listening to him ripple along in a matchlessly 
clear style describing the habits of a rose-bush to his 
informal class in botany made me feel like a clod- 
hopping boor. He talked as Huxley or Stevenson 
would write. His diction was music to my ears, and 
I felt sure the listening boys must learn more from 
him in clearness of word expressing clarity of 
thought than ever they could from grammar lessons 
or composition. My enunciation by comparison was 
slovenly, my pronunciation at times uncertain and I 


118 RE Re eae eG OY, 


dropped. often into boy slanguage for the sake of 
short-cutting an idea. Then, too, he could glow over 
a rose-bush with an enthusiasm I could never muster 
for a sentence or a clause. I felt, when I saw him 
in our garden, that I was in the presence of another 
Linneus who, at the unfolding of a blossom could 


say: 


‘“T saw God in his glory passing near me, 
and bowed my head in worship.” 


For a time I felt the boy’s attitude toward profes- 
sorship hanging about me like the odor of a labora- 
tory. The official weight of my title was. oppressive. 
The dignity and reserve considered necessary in a 
member of a faculty was irksomely irritating and 
seemed so silly. I felt sure every boy could see 
through it clearly enough whenever I tried wearing 
it like a mask or a dress coat. Only on our work- 
jobs, when some of us teacher folk joined the boys, 
grimed our hands, sooted our faces and soaked our 
shirts and overalls with sweat, did I feel normal 
and like a human being on two feet. As professors 
we were indeed a sessile lot, seemingly impractical 
and bookish and to be tolerated as good-naturedly 
as possible until graduation day. The boys were 
so alive, so real, so direct, so penetrating. Yet even 
they, as though by a process of instinctive imitation, 
seemed to don masks when they came into the pres-’ 
ence of dignified adults. So eager did I seem to 
break through this mutual reserve that upon writing 


prtieloe Re ATT I Bi Osy 11g 


down some of my views, I received a letter from the 
founder of our school whom we affectionately called 
“Doc,” saying: 


“You will be disappointed more than once. You 
will see your intentions and enthusiasms fail. The 
appeal of friendliness and love will not suffice. 
There is too much of the past in human nature. 
Authority and force are still big factors in successful 
government. You create for yourself during the 
first year of teaching an atmosphere that persists in 
the school tradition. You create in yourself certain 
habitual reactions that can be altered only slowly. 
Reserve, the willingness to use force if necessary, 
insistence upon discipline and recognition of the 
vast difference between your status as an adult and 
the undeveloped though eager mind of the boy; all 
these are necessary to real success in teaching.” 


Yet it was only when I forgot reserve, faced a 
youngster as boy to boy or man to man and acted on 
that delightful plane of friendship where all differ- 
ences of age or sex or job or race melt away that I 
was truly happy in my work. Of course much of 
the past lies strung and knotted within us. One need 
not read Nietzsche to know that much within us 1s 
still worm. But I had to choose between dealing 
with the past and with the worm by force, and trying 
an experiment in friendliness. What if I sometimes 
failed? I chose failure in my way rather than ap- 
parent success after the manner of Krupp. It seemed 
to me that I must choose between the handshake and 


120 SDH SoS RA ee BiOyy) 


the club, and I chose the former because it made me 
happier. Whenever I slipped into the past, and tried 
discipline by force, I felt unhappy, however I may 
have seemed to get results. It was not surface re- 
sults that I inwardly wished. I wanted mutual un- 
derstanding and accord of heart as well as brain. 

So, as a teacher, between the good-natured toler- 
ance of Heth, the querulous pessimism of Halley 
in his moods of depression, and the atmosphere of 
forceful discipline to which the school had largely 
surrendered I lapsed often into gloomy doubtings 
about my choice of a work in life. Intervale, at such 
times, became a cindery place of burnt-out educa- 
tional values, and we teachers merely cold clinkers 
scattered on the upward path of youth, itchy and 
irritating to its feet. But again, with the sparkle 
in some boy’s eye, would return the feeling of artis- 
try in teacherhood, and I would tingle with enthu- 
siasm for what I would, for a while at least, believe 
was the most important job in the world. 


CHAPTER VI 


WE EXPERIMENT WITH DEMOCRACY 


To the educator for whom the problems of de- 
mocracy are at all real, the vital necessity appears 
to be that of making the connection between the 
child and his environment as complete and intelli- 
gent as possible, both for the welfare of the child: 
and for the sake of the community. 

—JoHN Dewey. 


I 


I cAME to Intervale several years after it had 
been founded on ‘“‘Doc’s” dynamic youth and inex- 
haustible enthusiasm for an idea. It had been a 
school literally built by the boys and for the boys. 
I believe its first years were truly epic. Its history 
should have been written with the minute persever- 
ance of a Boswell. Ina letter written by one of the 
teachers in those pioneer days I find: 


‘Here are six miles of oak logs being spliced and 
notched into a single whole, a school-house with 
eleven classrooms. Dormitories above the class- 
rooms will house the boys. A huge gymnasium, also 
made of logs and measuring 106 x 62 feet will be one 
of the biggest constructions of its kind in the world, 
and built by boys! 


I21 


122 DDE) (Rob Ai B Oy 


‘Do you see them lifting, hauling, chopping, hew- 
ing, measuring, fitting, plumbing, leveling, nailing, 
bolting? Do you notice the order and precision? 
They have evolved it themselves with the help of 
but a few fundamental suggestions. 

‘They all, big and little, rise at four-thirty in the 
morning, take a setting-up plunge in the lake, munch 
a sandwich and drink a glass of milk. Sharp at five 
they are at work, and, with a short intermission for 
breakfast, keep at it until half-past noon. After 
dinner they may spend the rest of the day as they 
please, but no town, no sweet-shop, no _ out-of- 
bounds. Life in the woods and by the lake is full 
and its delights inexhaustible. “They are free from 
one until eight (which is bedtime) but never an 
afternoon passes but a gang of volunteers puts in 
hours of work at the common task of building a 
home.” 


When I came to Intervale very few boys were left 
who had helped saw and fit together the huge logs 
of which the buildings were made. We inherited 
the results of pioneer work, and only Big Bill re- 
membered the clearing of the land, the digging of 
foundations and the mixing of cement for laying of 
corner-stones. My wife, whom the boys called 
Kitty, once read a verse from Kipling by our fire- 
light which went straight to Bill’s heart: | 


“Well I know who’ll take the credit—all the clever 
chaps that followed— 
Came, a dozen men together—never knew my 
desert fears; 


AR TUM aA rAd eee SO Deg oye) 


Tracked me by the camps I'd quitted, used the 
water-holes I’d hollowed. 
They'll go back and do the talking. ‘They’ll be 


called the pioneers!” 


The most devoted and loyal lad on the place, he 
felt himself an integral part of the physical matrix 
of the school. His love was laid in the very mortar 
and stones and logs and spikes and roadways which 
were now our heritage. He had strained to heavy 
lifting, jammed his fingers, bruised his shins, and the 
sturdy strokes of his double-fitted ax had reluc- 
tantly felled some of the beautiful trees which had 
to go to make room for our cabins. ‘The plaster 
which he had troweled in between the logs, boys 
now picked out with their fingers to throw at each 
other’s heads. The double-decked Dutch tables he 
had helped saw and plane and mortise and polish 
were now comfortable resting places for hobnailed 
boots. 

Still, the spirit of the old pioneer days tried to live 
among us. The idea that boys had built the school, 
and that the school belonged to the boys tried hard 
to become a tradition. We should have considered 
ourselves organic links between the past and the 
future in an industrial democracy of boys. Some- 
how this concept never gripped me. I could never 
quite get it across to my boys because I failed to feel 
it deeply. Big Bill alone radiated some of the 
primal stuff of the place, but he too would soon go 
and the school would remain. 


124 THE REAL BOY 


Our jobs were softer than those of Bill’s day. 
We pulled weeds, sprayed plants, picked berries, 
repaired furniture, mowed lawns, shoveled coal, 
sifted ashes, milked cows, fed chickens, built chicken- 
coops, cleaned stables, sawed ice and split wood. 
But our great plant itself was too ponderous a thing 
to tear down and rebuild every year, as Hanford 
Henderson used to do with the buildings of his 
summer camp. We were settlers in a land already 
pioneered. Why Bill should want to knock a fellow 
down for marring one of the carved panels over a 
fireplace was hard for the boys to understand. To 
them it was a bit of fumed oak indented with letters 
which read ‘“To Teach Boys to Live.” To Bill it 
was a thing alive with rich memories of the days 
when it was carved, and polished and set carefully, 
lovingly in its appointed place. . 

There was something of the hero about Bill. He 
was the kind of human stuff that Nethardt loves to 
work into his sagas of the Middle West. Clearing 
the land, breaking the soil and laying the logs for 
our school had helped to make him so. ‘The pride 
of ownership was his, and we felt his presence as 
that of a soldier or a patriot devoted to the defense 
and development of his country. But he alone was 
left of that group of boys and men who had lived in 
tents and transformed a prairie wilderness into a 
community of besouled houses, graceful lawns and 
gardens laughing under tons of gloriously luxuriant 
roses. Our boys might learn to swing an ax like 


UPR A eanB Oy) 125 


Bill, but they could never feel his loyalty and devo- 
tion to the school. It was supreme. 

‘Maestro,’ said Agpawan one day, “I hear a 
man talk about the socialism. He said men who 
make the roads ought to ride on them in automo- 
bile, not the men who just buy automobile to ride 
on the road. He said people who so ride ought to 
work building roads. He said cities belong to men 
who build them, who do the work. Perhaps like the 
school belongs to Bill and Doc and boys who make 
it. When I hear him, the man sounded good. 
Afterward, when I think about it, I get disturbed in 
my mind whether he is right. But my mind will not 
think very much. Tell me what you think.” 

To tell the truth, I did not think, for I had not 
thought. My interests had never included eco- 
nomics, although I had enjoyed charming talks with 
Florence Kelley, Harry Laidler, Bouk White and 
Scott Nearing on Socialism. I had read somewhat 
of Wells and Shaw and the Fabians, but had failed 
utterly to follow Sidney Webb or Karl Marx into 
hard figures and logic. My sympathies had always 
been with the Russian revolutionists who wanted to 
get rid of the Czar, just as they were with my great- 
grandparents who wanted to get rid of King George. 
But I could not make a clear-cut statement to Agpa- 
wan about Socialism except that it involved a dream 
of change from our present economic system over 
into one which some people believed would be better. 


126 THE MRA TOR OY. 


That struck a cheerful chord in Aggie’s heart, and 
we decided to learn all we could about this dream. 


II 


Our school catalogue said that Intervale was a de- 
mocracy of boys. Boys came here to learn how to 
live in the democracy of the United States of 
America. They were to be trained into a vision and 
into something of the technique of leadership in such 
a democracy. Their parents were folk quite satis- 
fied with an economic system which enabled them to 
send their boys to a boarding-school. Doc, our 
founder, was an enthusiastic industrialist with a 
truly democratic heart and a brain more like that 
of a Napoleon than of a Henry Ford. He had all 
the semblance of a Thomas Jefferson in bathrobe 
and worn slippers; but I always fancied catching 
glimpses, beneath that dressing-gown, of a steel 
cuirass, and seemed to hear the rattle of a sword. 

In temperament and economic vision, Doc im- 
pressed me as a curious mental cross between Lenin 
and E. H. Gary. Philosophically he seemed to 
swing in great strokes from St. Francis to Nietzsche. 
Ask him for his coat and he would give you his 
shirt also, with collar and necktie thrown in. Op- 
pose his personal will and he seemed ready to step 
upon you with the indifference of a boy exterminat- 
ing caterpillars. Perhaps he tried to find an Aristo- 
telian golden-mean between these ambivalent oscil- 
lations. To us, his associates in education, he 


ney RiROA TT Bi ye £27 


remained a man of mystery and a most lovable per- 
sonal friend. 

In the school, Doc seemed eloquently in favor of 
a boy democracy as an item of creed, but most chary 
as tovits becoming.a practice. Ele, did not fear it; 
tremblingly, as did Seeds, our principal; but he 
would not trust it far. -A friend and admirer of 
Henry Ford, he believed in a Fordian democracy 
built of a series of small oligarchies. Each minor 
king, prince, baron, duke and knight was a necessary 
chessman on a great organization board, dominated 
by the mind of the supreme power, a power utterly 
democratic in conviction and principle—but wise as 
to their use! This curious dualism permeated our 
body politic as a school. I watched its influence 
among the teachers and among the boys. In Agpa- 
wan it took form in picturesque thinking. 

‘*‘. wonder much about the soul of man,’ he said 
to me, after a rather hazy conversation about poli- 
tics in democracy. His naively primitive mind 
seemed to want to dive down below the general and 
the abstract and to discover the personal and the 
concretely human. “A book says the soul is in the 
front of the brain. Where, then, is the soul in a 
tree? Professor Halley say they grow and eat and 
sleep and breathe. But he say they have not brains. 
Have man seen the soul in the brain? My people 
in Bontoc will want to know. If I to be a teacher, 
I must know, too. Is there a book about the soul? 
I do not mean the Bible, but some book that tells 


128 SL Ey oR Bio B.Oay 


where the soul live and how many kinds there are. 
I feel the soul inside me, but I do not know, I must 
find out.’ Thus Agpawan, and I felt within him a 
struggling desire to know about fundamental differ- 
ences between not only men and trees, but men and 
men. I wished we might read Sumner’s “Folk 
Ways” together and watch the divergent growth of 
original soul-stuff into the two great dominant 
groups of mankind in the Orient and the Occident of 
the world. Perhaps only with such a background 
could so curiously inward-working a mind as his 
understand the soul of masses and classes. For, 
‘Social classes, plebeians, patricians, proletarians, 
aristocrats, all have a common esprit de corps, 
which modifies character, sentiment, conduct and 
thought. Above all this is the soul of humanity it- 
self, the realm in which only the great religious 
founders have successfully wrought and which our 
psychology of today is only just beginning to under- 
stand.” 

What would Agpawan find in America? A primi- 
tive, woodsy cave-man wafted across the ocean and 
landed in a little oasis of our great throbbing indus- 
trial democracy, in search of the soul of man! 
From the jungle and the rice-field he seemed to have 
come not from another land alone, but from an- 
other age. He came, searching for the soul and for 
a message of a new social order for his people. We 
fed him algebra, grammar, theology and congres- 
sional politics as mirrored in the Literary Digest, 


CURE IN eA Te BG) e\e 129 


his subsidiary classroom text. We told him of our 
national democracy, and of its miniature type in our 
school community. In my classes he heard discus- 
sion and argument like the following: 

We had been reading about the attempts of the 
Non-Partisan League to establish a chain of codp- 
erative banks. Clayto arose and asked why we sat 
in class discussing democracy and codperation when 
we so picturesquely failed to practice them. He 
made a speech. 

“Look at Windish at the chicken farm. Gets: 
good eggs from the hens that we feed and water and 
clean house for. Sells those eggs to the hotel while 
the school buys storage eggs for us boys to eat who 
work on the hen-farm. Farm’s supposed to be in 
cooperation with the school. It wouldn’t be so bad 
if they didn’t tell us that the school is a democratic 
outfit run by the boys. What have we got to say 
about these things? Nix!” 

I mentioned this speech at our next faculty meet- 
ing, and made another plea for a student council, 
where the boys might have at least a nominal hand 
at governing the school, where they might get a bit 
of parliamentary practice. 

“Tt would be just like Russia,” said Seeds, our 
principal. ‘These boys are not ready for govern- 
ment. They'd make as big a mess of it as have the 
Bolsheviki. [hey couldn’t handle administrative 
problems. They are immature and don’t know their 


130 PRISE AC Dobe IONS 


own minds. ‘They’d not be hollering for student 
government if you didn’t stimulate and encourage 
them. If you want a boy democracy, why not limit 
it to your own classes ?”’ 

There were twenty boys in English III. I wanted 
to know each one of them and to work with them 
personally on their own line of interest. So, fol- 
lowing Seeds’ suggestion, I asked them to organize 
the class so that I should be liberated from all ad- 
ministrative duties and thus able to devote myself 
to teaching. Murdo, the huskiest, was made 
Sheriff. Chambers, the brainiest, became Secretary. 
I was elected President and given indefinite leave of 
absence, with the Secretary installed at my desk. 
The class read books or wrote letters or composi- 
tions under such discipline as their own Sheriff ad- 
ministered, while one of the boys at a time came to 
me, by my fireside for mutual education or “draw- 
ing out.” 

So well did this experiment work, that I applied 
it to my classes of younger boys, who responded with 
equal enthusiasm and maintained their own disci- 
pline as well in every way as I had maintained disci- 
pline for them. Once a week we gathered together 
in our classroom, once a week we met as a group by 
Kitty’s fireside. The remaining periods were spent 
in the way I have sketched. I shall, in Chapter 
VII set down some samples of my cozy conversa- 
tions with the boys. 


VEE Ry ANT, \ BIG) Y: 131 


III 


Krupp was a German militarist of the old school, 
and had served in our own National Guard as an 
officer at one time. He believed in the discipline of 
the barracks, and attempted to introduce it into his 
- cottage-dormitory. Shoes, for instance, must be 
lined up underneath the bed, toes pointing out and 
touching a certain crack between the boards. The 
boys had no inherent objection to lining up shoes 
on parade, but they did resent Krupp’s utterly un- 
humorous approach to the matter. They resented 
the rattle of his sword. 

So when Krupp was off at a monthly Turnverein, 
a committee visited his quarters, dumped his furni- 
ture onto the piazza roof, knotted his sheets into 
amorphous wads, emptied bureau drawers upon the 
floor and replaced them, upside down, in their proper 
places and set his bed, one leg in air off the eaves. 

Krupp returned rockily over the trolley-station 
hill by the light of a monstrous moon. His fantas- 
tic gait was so ludicrous to the watchful boys that 
they almost spoiled the fun of surprise by laughing 
him into suspicions. However, he merely tiptoed 
from room to room, only once stopping to request 
quietude. When Krupp was full of imitation Ger- 
man beer he was a most pacific and amiable crea- 
ture. When he reached his room, tears came in- 
stead of such florid anger as would have inflamed 
him had he been sober. He sat mournfully in his 


132 THE REAL ) BOW 


room upon the one remaining chair until morning, 
with its chilly reaction to a convivial night wakened 
rage in his heart and he strode wrathfully in upon 
Seeds. Poor principal! ‘The boys came to ‘him 
with complaints against the teachers, and the teach- 
ers with grievances against the boys. ‘This time, 
however, the boys were solidly against Prussianism 
in Westville and, in such times of war-time tension, 
there was room only for compromise. It was 
agreed that if Krupp’s household goods were re- 
instated, he would deliver the discipline of the dorm 
into the hands of a committee, of which he was to be 
merely an advisory member. Krupp submitted, as 
Germany later submitted, not to an idea but to a 
superior force. 

Force has so long been a dominant factor in most 
schools, as in nations and peoples, that it held over 
as a tradition even in this attempt at a democratic 
experiment. It cropped out, now and then, in its 
most malignant form. Agpawan was so touched 
with the treatment of Lundley, that he came to me 
with wide open Philippino-brown eyes and asked: 
‘Do those men have the soul ?”’ 

Lundley was a_ good-natured, rubber-spined, 
handsome, fun-loving fellow who delighted in girls 
and dancing, hated the monastic side of our stag-life 
at the school and sometimes slipped away to a 
nearby dance-hall for an evening. Krupp had 
caught him in the act and threatened dire punish- 
ment for the morrow. ‘Well, it’s worth it, any- 


SIT on HaeAr Le oy hs eve 133 


how,”’ the boy had replied, making worse his crime. 

Three members of the faculty seized him next 
day. Two held him down while a third caned him 
with a tough switch of iron-wood from our beautiful 
grove by the lake. I met Krupp that afternoon. He 
caught me amiably by the arm, beaming smiles. 
‘Say, you ought to have seen the way we laid it onto 
Lundley this morning. It was great. He won't 
get into mischief for a while. I held him and 
Brough held him and Seeds nearly wore out a stic 
on him.” | 

Reform Lundley? A few days later Krupp’s 
room was rough-housed again. Lundley was 
brought on the carpet before the faculty. Would he 
promise to obey the law, keep discipline, mind his 
business, remain loyal to the school, refuse to join 
such escapades as the boys had staged? If not, he 
would go home. He preferred to go home. He 
came to me afterwards to say good-by. “It’s damn 
hard on my folks, but it’s good luck for me. I like 
the school all right, but some of you teachers don’t 
know what being a boy is. I reckon you’ve mostly 
all forgotten. I’m sorry to go, and glad to go, 
both.” 

Said Seeds to me: “I find it salutary to fire at 
least one boy every year. Puts the fear of God 
into the hearts of the others if they see it really 
happen, and not merely hear it talked about.” This 
particular brand of the fear of the Lord was made 
manifest to me a few hours later by Big Bill, the 


134 THE REAL BOY 


most loyal of all boys to the school. ‘That firing 
of Lundley made me so damn (excuse me) mad that 
I could run off to the army, or anywhere, to get out 
of this hole. He wasn’t any worse than the rest of 
the gang. They fired him just for an excuse to fire 
somebody, and because he was in wrong with 
Krupp.” 

How true it is that we teacher folk forget that 
we were ever boys. How tragically we lose what- 
ever sense of humor we once had! How pitiful that 
a boy like Bill should have to say ‘“‘excuse me” for 
using the word damn exactly where that misused 
little word belongs, when he talks to one of us. 

Again I suggested a student council for Intervale. 
I believed that if we could air our indignations as 
well as our spontaneous ideas of any sort, we would 
have less individual gossip, frittery argument and 
unharnessed emotion in our midst. To see a boy 
like Big Bill drop into an attitude of don’t-care-ness 
was like witnessing a crime. Damns are sometimes 
healthy explosives, but shoulder-shrugs in the face 
of an issue are not. I feared a drift in Bill from 
“damn”’ to “I should worry!” 

My boys framed a constitution in their history 
classes, and asked Seeds to consider it. He refused. 
He believed I was plotting with the boys for the 
overthrow of his own school government. I apolo- 
gized and filed the draft of the constitution among 
my records of Intervale days. 

However, I could not quite give up the hope that 


pa aR ANG BOY, 135 


we might some day organize a boys’ court. For the 
memory of a visit to the Ford Republic, an indus- 
trial school for boys just outside Detroit was strong 
within me. 

A small boy judge presided over the bench there. 
Two Jewish lads were brought before him, accused 
of selling oranges dishonestly. After carefully 
listening to the case, he rested both elbows on the 
desk before him, pressed his chin between his hands 
and delivered a judgment worthy of Portia or Ben 
Lindsey. | 

‘You two guys are innocent of dishonesty. Sell- 
ing things too high is your business. ‘The guys that 
get stuck, they suffer, but it’s their fault for being 
so dumb as to get stuck. But it’s mean to sell or- 
anges to thirsty kids just after a hot ball game for 
the price you asked. You ought to be decent. This 
court can’t sentence you on the charges against you. 
But this court ruled last time that nobody in this 
school should call you kids Sheenies because every kid 
ought to be treated alike here no matter about his 
religion. We passed that rule because we thought 
you was decent guys. Now you’ve behaved just like 
Sheenies what are a bum sort of Jew instead of a 
good sort of Jew. Now the court rules that it’s all 
right to call you Sheenies again until you’ve done 
different and proved that you can be decent as the 
rest of the guys.” 

This boy judge was allowed to think for himself. 
The school and the boys trusted him. He could keep 


136 CEA RA ANT B®) 2Y, 


with mercy. Boys are apt to be overhiarsh in their 
as been my 


his job as Judge only so long as he a justice 


judgments against each other, and it 
experience that we adults are often called upon to 
reason boy-nature into a merciful mood. I wanted 
to discover boys like that at Intervale. The court 
would reveal them. They exist in almost any large 
group of intelligent boys. But Intervale, planned to 
‘“Teach Boys to Live,”’ was not quite ready to let the 
boys think for themselves when it came to the prac- 
tical issues of school government or discipline. If 
‘‘Doc”’ had been with us, I believe we should have 
had a court. Seeds was scared. 

Yet, despite our failure at democracy, the boys 
in my day grew to love the school for its primitive 
elements so close to the generic soul of adolescence: 
woods, water, hard work in a spirit of fun, the crea- 
tion of rough, strong necessary things, and added to 
these were firelight and food, candle-light and music, 
dogs, and the making of friendships. Letters from 
Intervale boys continue to breathe something of the 
immortal spirit that dwelt there among us, as it 
dwells in countless schools only awaiting fuller chan- 
nels for expression, only needing more confidence, 
less fear, a little more imagination, sympathy and 
love of youth in evolution. It is the spirit of faith 
in the dream of youth, its vision of the infinite possi- 
bilities of growth and attainment not in the world of 
money or of power, but in the realm of soul. 


CHAPTERUVIL 


A LAY CONFESSIONAL 


The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, 
and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say 
aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of 
human nature. 

—EMERSON. 


I po not quote Emerson as a mere chapter-head 
embellishment, but because he knew boys, and be- 
cause he saw in them so much of that eternal quality 
of youth which must be kept alive among men and 
women if our world is to be a free and happy place 
in which to live: the quality of self-reliant indepen- 
dence of thought and action. ‘‘How a boy is master 
of society! Independent, irresponsible, looking out 
from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, 
he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the 
swift summary way of boys, as good, bad, interest- 
ing, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers him- 
self never about consequences, about interests; he 
gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must 
court him; he does not court you. But the man is, 
as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. 

137 


138 Aba HN ORT VAN bye 8a Og 


As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, 
he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy 
or the hatred of hundreds whose affections must now 
enter into his account.” I had read these words 
long before entering a classroom as a teacher. 
They rang true to my own adolescence, and true in 
the last two sentences to my adult days. I resolved 
that my classroom and my hearthside should be 
places where a boy might feel free to speak his own 
mind straight and clear and as nearly in his own 
language as his growing set of inhibitions would 
allow. 

The divergence between the vocabulary of boy- 
hood and that of respectable maturity helps build 
the intangible but ever so real and tough a wall 
that stands between one generation and the next. 
We adults preserve our full knowledge of the words 
and phrases picked up in our school-days and some- 
times we exercise them in the smokers of Pullman 
cars, in corners of our clubs or the lobbies of hotels. 
They continue to thrive in lumber camps, racing 
stables, in the army and aboard ships. They avoid 
print, and even Mr. Mencken piously neglects them 
in his study of The American Language. Yet they 
belong, by right, to the unshackled lingo of boy- 
hood. I have never been able to sense anything im- 
moral or indecent about them. Generic, crisp, 
straight to the point, they make our dictionary 
equivalents seem blunderingly clumsy, hypocritical 
and unreal. I feel, when I speak to a boy about 


THE REAL BOY 139 


some relatively simple physiological process in re- 
spectable polysyllables, very much as I would feel 
if I had always to call a daisy chrysanthemum leu- 
cantheum, or say leptinotarsa decemlineata when I 
meant potato-bug. 

Yet in one sense, I am glad that my boys at In- 
tervale compromised with society (“‘everywhere in 
conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its 
members’) and spoke to me quite boyishly, but 
under their own censorship. Otherwise, I could 
not, at times, record their words in this book. 
Their acceptance of our decorous traditions en- 
ables me to jot down their sayings with a close 
approach to precision. 

I was under contract with myself at this time to 
write at least a page a day about some occurrence 
which would redeem the past twenty-four hours 
from leaden semblance to dead routine. ‘The tread- 
mill of daily grind and regurgitation in a boarding- 
school is punctuated with a note or color of real 
accent now and then. I made it my business to hunt 
for these and set them down on paper. Life can so 
easily become merely a series of repetitions that I 
feared I might lose its savor if I did not look de- 
liberately for its spice. I feared getting into the 
habit of doing today what I had done yesterday 
because that is the most facile thing to do. I was 
afraid of capture by what Bertrand Russell calls the 
law of universal laziness. A teacher succumbs to 
this law perhaps more quickly than any other la- 


140 THE REAL BOY 


borer except a government clerk; and so I sought 
for partial salvation in my diary. Recording stray 
conversations with my boys did indeed bring me 
color and accent and spice. Turn over a few pages 
with me from this journal. They were filled as soon 
after a boy had left me as I found it possible, or as 
a nightcap before retiring. 


I 


West Jackson, half American, quarter Scotch and 
quarter Indian, as he put it; a brown, husky lad of 
fourteen, weighing 140 pounds, and handsome as a 
young Jove, has been down to call. 


‘We fixed Karl’s (the monitor) bed with strings 
so his mattress will fall to the floor when he gets in. 
We’ve got it in for him because he’s so uppish 
running the dorm. ‘Treats us like German privates. 
Yesterday he went into a pail of water. We'll civi- 
lize him yet.” | 


A pause, and then a shift from Karl to Eros. 
“Say, folks don’t think much of puppy-love, do they? 
But I’ve had the same girl for five years. Here’s 
her picture. Isn’t she pretty nice? I hammered out 
a copper acorn for her in the shop. She hung it on 
her wall. It’s the Indian symbol for loyalty. Want 
her to be loyal to me until we grow up and get 
married.” 


That was all. No discussion of sex or marriage, 
such as the boys sometimes precipitate from their 
questioning minds. Everything was settled, final. 
He skipped from sweetheart to father. 


THE REAL BOY 141 


“My father was a lawyer. Lived in Arizona. 
Nobody called him Mister. Called him Kindly 
Jackson because he was so good about collecting 
his fees. Used to say he liked human nature be- 
cause it always paid up sooner or later if you 
trusted it. Old nigger he saved from hanging paid 
up as soon as he could. ‘[hat’s why they called him 
Kindly.” 


The boy didn’t want conversation. He wanted 
monologue. Someone to talk to. Someone who 
would listen. He rambled on among a dozen 
rooms and corridors of memory and out into bright 
sunshiny piazzas of imagination. Tramp talk, 
wandery here and there at whimsy will. ‘A boy’s 
will is the wind’s will, and the thoughts of youth are 
long, long thoughts.”’ 


“Kind of like you. Don’t usually like teachers. 
They’re always lamping you to see if you’re doing 
something that ain’t right. You don’t seem to be a 
Sherlock Holmes all the time. Bet I could light a 
cigarette right now and you wouldn’t go squeal on 
me to Seeds!” 


“Do you like to smoke, West?” I asked. 


“Not much. Don’t believe I’d think of it if it 
weren't against the rules. Kind of like to sneak off 
behind the powerhouse with the guys, though, and 
put one over on Seeds. We call it the ‘butt-end trail’ 
down there, and we always lamp him coming before 
he can lamp us. It’s kind of fun, but I guess smok- 
ing isn’t so good for you if you want to keep your 
wind. Which is worse, a cigarette or a pipe or a 
cigar or chewing?” 


142 TPHEVREAL BOY 


Kitty came in with a plate of fudge. Our taste 
turned from tobacco to chocolate, and so did our 
conversation. 

2 


Amo tumbled in today, wiping sweat from his 
face, his hands grimy with honest dirt, his boots 
still muddy where the door-scraper had failed on 
its job. 


“Gee, but Brough makes you hustle. We've 
worked like dogs laying the foundation of the calf- 
shed. Didn’t have tools to’go around. Brough 
must be descended from that old Pharaoh who told 
the Yids to make bricks without any hay. And 
then he says we're lazy!” 


Brough runs the work-jobs. How so adipose a 
man can be so energetic and ubiquitous beats me. He 
is everywhere at once, and can do a bit of every- 
thing. One of my boys made a cartoon of him, a 
pair of whirling fists amidst flying chips. He 
teaches trigonometry, also, surveying the surround- 
ing country with his boys. He keeps everyone busy, 
drives the boys hard, but drives himself harder. 
A man who does that wins respect, and loyalty. 


‘But I like it!” continued Amo. “Like the feel 
of it. It must be making something out of a fellow, 
that kind of stuff. The guys all kick about it some, 
and cuss Brough; but he makes us stick to a thing 
until it’s done. Guess we'll thank him for it some- 
time.” 


3 
Paul has returned from a sojourn in the hospital. 


He evidently suffered from heart-trouble there, as 
well as from a broken arm. 


Lick aey eRe AB Oy: 143 


“Ts it good for a fellow my age to be in love with 
a woman so much older?’ (Paul is seventeen.) 
“That nurse showed me what real love is. I had 
only imagined it before. But I get to wondering 
whether I ought to go on loving her. She could al- 
most be my mother. But she was awful sweet.” 


He told me the old, old story: acquaintance, 
friendliness, sympathy, motherliness turned to pas- 
sionate affection and drawing first filial, then equally 
passionate response; the dawn of ecstatic illusion in 
a youngster with its backfire into doubt mixed with 
desire. : 


“Paul,” I said, ‘‘charge that up to experience. 
Not necessarily the best experience for a young man, 
but better than many others which boys go through. 
Don’t fool yourself into thinking she taught you 
what real love is. You got a taste of only some of 
its elements, fragmentary, half-baked elements of 
such a love-life as may some day be yours.”’ 


“But what shall I do about her? Cut her out 
entirely ?” 


‘Let your correspondence simmer down to an 
occasional friendly letter, Paul. Get off the lover 
basis as soon as you can. You'll have the memory 
of an interesting, if not a truly happy experience. 
Cash in on it as such. No use lamenting it. But 
don’t bank on such experiences as necessary to your 
happiness, or to your discovery of what real love is. 
Look ahead to the girl of about your own age whom 
you ll really want as a wife, and as the mother of 
your children. Save up the best of you for her and 
for your job together. Be grateful, if you feel like 
it, to your nurse, for she meant you no harm and has 


144 AH aR EAST 5B @) sy; 


done you none perhaps. But be glad that you’ve 
graduated from that fragment of love, and can look 
forward to something more worthwhile, and 


happier.” 


Paul left the feeling with me, when he went away, 
that I had said something worth his thinking about. 
What more can a teacher ask? 


4 


Baker is athletic, and dances. He loves good 
music, and begs me to run a record or two for him 
whenever he drops in to chat. He cannot endure 
rag-time or jazz unless his muscles are in motion. 
‘Then it’s music; but when you have to sit still to 
it, it makes you feel like hell,” he declared. 

Yesterday, after some Chopin preludes and 
Brahms waltzes, I put on Liszt’s ‘“‘Liebestraum,”’ 
which Kitty has just acquired. Its silvery cataract 
of shimmering notes brought a scowl to his usually 
smileful face. 


“Gee, but that’s rotten! Why do they spoil a 
thing by jumbling up the noises and spilling them 
out like that?” 


Agpawan, however, sat wrapped in a mantle of 
bliss. The only music he had known before coming 
to America was that of the tom-tom and war-drum, 
the fierce yell-songs of returning head-hunters, and 
the notes of birds in bush and tree. 


“Not like this music that comes from a box,” he 
said. ‘‘We sing just up and down and up and down: 


With RH At BOW 145 


‘‘Penotolac nan olo nan isa ay 
Foso, no quo tai fenotoa 
Nan aliwidco.”’ 


Which, he informed me, being interpreted, means 
“‘T killed and took the head of this man because he 
killed my friend.” 


5 


Grady came in with a story of weak will. Says 
he can’t stop smoking. Worried about sex. Been 
reading some of those damnably pietistic sex-instruc- 
tion books. Enough to loosen anyone’s will, those 
sentimental effusions. He seemed to want under- 
standing and sympathy. I have both, but he’ll not 
get a symptom of either until he braces up. Pitiful 
kid, in a way, but he’ll not know that I think he’s 
pitiful. Maybe I was a bit rough on him, but I 
spoke out what I thought. [I said: 


“Grady, you’re the mushiest, flabbiest, whiniest 
saphead who ever shufiled around these grounds and 
tried to keep awake through a class. When a kid 
with tough muscles and some pep comes down here 
with a story of troubles, I listen to it, and try to 
help him. I can’t do a thing for you. Get to work 
on the woodpile in the afternoon instead of worming 
yourself into soft jobs. Get into the gym and play 
ball. Take some boxing from Nat. Come back 
here in a week or so and tell me what you’ve been 
doing to get hardened up and I[’ll talk to you. I 
have no use for watery mush.” 


He went away with firmer lips and a stiffer hand- 
shake. If I had been comforting, and sympathetic, 


146 TeRE? RV AL BOY 


he would probably have left me with tears of grati- 
tude and a smile of sentimental joy. He will come 


back. 
6 


“T jess wish I could get that slick guy of a Kaiser! 
I would take some hot grease from that pan and 
pour a little drop in one side of his nose, and a little 
drop in the other and then run some down his neck. 
I'd cut little holes in his skin and put him in that big 
bowl of acid Mr. Halley has in the laboratory. I'd 
have Mr. Windish’s peacock come and sit on the 
rim of the bowl and peck at that Kaiser’s eyes. 
Guess I'd light a fire under the bowl, too.” 


Thus Spic Solar as Castillo fried potatoes in a 
skillet over an oil-stove while I lay on his bed in the 
cabin, awaiting a taste of pigeon. 


Spic had almost shed tears at the trapping of a 
skunk. Spic had staged a fight in a bathtub between 
Thor, the Irish-terrier, and four white rats, but he 
had run away when the scrap began, averse to wit- 
nessing the small beasties suffer. Spic was the 
most gentle and benign of all imaginable boys. I 
marveled at this artistic technique of inquisitorial 
torment. 


‘You didn’t want to see your white rats eaten, 
Spic,’’ I ventured. ‘‘How could you torture one of 
your own kind?” 


‘That Kaiser guy is not our kind. He made the 
war. He’s a hell of a guy. I think I could do any- 
thing to him and nothing would be too bad.” 


ere ye RR ACT Bb Oi ye 147 
I whistled a bit of melody from “The Mikado,” 


about the punishment fitting the crime, while Cas- 
tillo put pigeon and potatoes on our tin plates. 


7 


Restrepo comes to us to learn English. He is 
keenly ambitious, works hard, and is acquiring a 
clear enunciation despite his environment of Ameri- 
can boys. ‘Tonight he came down after supper 
wondering: 


‘““Whay does the bois swallow deir wurds so 
much? I say ‘please pass de butter’ and they do not 
understand me. I run all de wurds together into 
one and the other; like ‘pleaspassdebu-r-r’ and they 
understand queek. When I pronouce T in water, 
they laugh, but if I say wh-r-r like they, eet ees all 
right.”’ 


He sits at table where, when tapioca is wanted, 
the request is made for fish-eyes and glue; where 
water is sky-juice and milk is cow-juice; where one 
slings the grease and laps up the suds and slings his 
teeth into the sinkers. I am supposedly his teacher 
of English, but much of his education will come 
from his fellow-kind in their leisure hours. 


8 
Kitty left Frank and me by the crackling beech- 
logs with buttered popcorn and cocoa. “Do you 


have to be married in order to be happy?” asked 
Frank. “Stories tell you about living happy after 
you’re married, but some folks don’t. What is hap- 
piness, anyhow?” 


148 EDR MGA 3) Ye 


Never having found a categorical or satisfactory 
definition of happiness, I spoke from memory. 


“Frank, the happiest day in my life was when I 
first saw the Pacific Ocean. After five hours of hard 
work, I reached the top of a mountain in Mexico. 
I took off my clothes for coolness and scrambled up 
a big bowlder which rose above the scrubby pines 
around me and seemed to lift me right up into the 
very center of a sunshiny universe. I stood naked 
and alone in a glorious bath of wind and sun. Range 
after range of mountains melted away into the sky- 
line around me. White little villages rode like 
bobbing corks on great blue waves. ‘To westward 
the ranges broke, like a drawn curtain, and a great 
half-circle of burning silver hurt my eyes with its 
sharp brilliance. It was the Pacific. 


“T felt suddenly happy. It wasn’t just the bird- 
song in the little pines below me, blending with the 
wind-song in the feathery needles; or the gorgeous 
beauty of all that I saw with my eyes; or the feel of 
sunlight and wind on my body; but perhaps a com- 
pound or resultant of all these added to the joy of 
hard work well done and something long desired 
suddenly won. Probably other elements entered this 
composite feeling, unconscious memories of past 
cheerful things in my life, or perhaps even in the 
lives of my ancestors for centuries and ages past, 
but, anyhow, I was supremely happy for perhaps 
half an hour or a little more.”’ 


I believe I was quite eloquent. Frank listened 
with large eyes. He seemed to catch some of the 
feeling which returned to me, like a dim and ghostly 
memory, and echo as though from another world. 


THe EAT, BO y 149 


‘And is that the way you feel when you are 
married ?” 


“Marriage, Frank, is not like climbing a moun- 
tain and finding happiness all in a sweet lurnp, as it 
were. It’s more like the fun of the climb. It’s the 
fun of doing things together with someone you love 
to do things with. Maybe it is happiness spread out 
thin over a number of days or years, as you spread 
butter on bread to make it taste better when you 
eatvit,” 


‘This cocoa is awful good,” Frank answered, and 
we talked about how garter-snakes may feel when 
they are prisoned in your pocket. 


9 


Aggie got a yellow slip from Seeds today saying 
that his load of study is too heavy and that he must 
drop a subject. He came to me and said he would 
rather drop algebra than anything else. 


“T cannot teach the algebra to my people in Bon- 
toc. They would not understand what it means 
for, or how use it in life. I think my people’s boys 
would like the history. Some or all will want to 
learn English. I like civics because my people must 
learn to self-government themselves. So I choose 
to drop the algebra.” 


But algebra trains the mind, Seeds said. Brough, 
teacher of math, agreed. So Agpawan must drop 
civics and proceed with his struggles with x and y 
and z, and the cubes and squares of this disembodied 
number and that. 


150 THE REAL BOY 


I asked Brough if it would not be as reasonable to 
ask Murdo, our star basket-ball center to quit throw- 
ing baskets for practice and take to his room with 
dumb-bells and Indian-clubs for training, as to ask 
Aggie to train his mind on algebra for teaching civil 
government to Philippinos. But Brough laughed 
and said I must be joking; that anyone could see the 
difference in training methods at a glance! 


Since Aggie is condemned to algebra, I shall en- 
courage him in the delusion about its gymnastic 
value, for why should the boy be miserable about 
his fate? No use adding gloom to disappointment. 
But in my heart I shall feel very sore when I see 
this sensitive, poetic, nature-loving, God-fearing 
little brownie of the jungles heading for his daily 
forty minutes of xyz and parenthesis squared. 


IO 


Lyell thinks he may be a pervert. Came down 
with a book, another of those pious perversions of 
religiosity and false puritanism that somehow fall 
into the hands of normal boys and convince them 
that they suffer from some malignant moral cancer 
which only sentimental prayers will cure. 


Told me the threadbare story of being ‘led 
astray’ by a homosexual teacher in another school. 
Said he had hoped, feared, despaired, contemplated 
suicide, fought back again into hope but was finally 
convinced, by this book, that there was probably 
something organically wrong within him. His worry 
had turned from thought and act to morbid specula- 
tion concerning the very structure of his person, of 
his character, as though the Great Potter’s hand had 


HE OREAL” BOW} 151 


shaken in making him, and damned him into the class 
of beings now catalogued as homosexuals. 


We delved into his past life deeply and widely 
enough to convince me that the lad might be merely 
passing through a phase of development, twisted 
askew for a time, which should mark simply another 
step in the building, the integrating of his person- 
ality. 


I am not competent to deal clinically with abnor- 
mal cases, but I feel that a teacher may safely try to 
shift a boy’s thought from worry and fear into how- 
ever an unscientific channel of divergent attention. 
Lyell says he has a sweetheart in the sunny south, a 
thousand miles from here. We have agreed that 
he shall devote most of his English composition time 
to writing letters to her, which I shall read for sug- 
gestion and criticism and which he will revise until 
periect for artistry.in fields romantic... Hes to 
switch from thinking about pathology into dreams of 
the future tempered into everyday chatter about the 
present. 


I feel, sometimes, like an amateur psychoanalyst 
when these lads come to me with their more sensi- 
‘tive problems. I wonder if we teachers should not 
cultivate something of the patient technique of 
Freud and then, if we can guess the way, follow 
analysis by a psychosynthesis, at least in preclusive 
suggestion. 


II 


“Mr. Hamilton, I just discovered that if you 
spell God backward you get dog. Do you think God 
cares about that?” 


152 TH BOR BAD) BOY. 


Frank seems quite God-conscious. Queer little 
gnome. Introspective, and sensitive to the meaning 
of things. I replied: 


‘“T hope God cares for dogs as much as you do. 
He made them, and perhaps he loved them so well 
that he gave them his own name spelled backward 
just to remember him’by. I don’t know; but I hardly 
think either God or dogs care much about spelling. 
Let’s go down to the kennels and see how Gee is 
growing. His commissary department seems to stay 
altogether too big for his legs.”’ 


We reached the kennels. Bobbie and Johnnie 
were fighting as mildly and as persistently as usual, 
charging, circling, feinting, leaping, rolling, scurry- 
ing, nabbing, growling, yapping and occasionally 
grappling hard and earnest in a turmoil of flying 
ears and legs. Gee was lolling on his back, paws in 
air, playing with a string. 


‘“Thought Gee was going to be a father dog; but 
1»? 


look, he’s got nipples for milk! 


I tried to explain rudimentary nipples as vestiges 
from some dim past unisexual day, and pointed out 
that we men, like most mammals, carry anatomical 
reminders of ancient times in the same way. I did 
not use these long words, and Frank seemed to be 
satisfied for the moment. He leaped to the next 
question. 


‘Why do pigs and dogs have runts in their lit- 
ters?’ ‘To which I confessed ignorance of the 
mechanism by which the runt was evolved, but specu- 


ehh ek EAC oR Ovi 153 


lated upon the possible languishing behind in growth 
of the unfittest for uterine life. “This seemed to fill 
the bill, but it led to further hereditary speculation. 


‘Did you say in class that sometimes dogs got 
hare-lip? And do you suppose they get it because 
their mother saw a rabbit while she was having 
pups?” 


I recited all I knew of my friend Bill Blades’ 
experiments with hare-lip dogs at the Carnegie 
Institution and felt pumped dry of all my smatter- 
ings of hereditary science before Frank grew tired 
of my eloquence and suggested that Gee have a bath 
in kerosene for fleas. 


12 


John put a crystal of cobalt-nitrate into a clear 
solution of sodium silicate, and watched it grow into 
a beautiful, fronding fern-plant of delicately irradi- 
ant crystals. 


He wrote a vivid description of this whole process 
as a composition for English III; rewrote it 
for better wording, perfect spelling and the best of 
penmanship and got marked high. 


He wrote the composition in his biology note- 
book, although the experiment was done in the chem- 
ical laboratory, and for his course in chemistry. By 
showing the possible relationships of growth in life 
and in non-living matter, he got due credit for the 
work in biology. 


His sketches were so well done that I chalked 
him down for a ninety point in drawing. 


154 Drie RA ORB OY, 


This is what I would call a real co-relation of 
studies. It lacks the direct point of contact between 
studies and work-jobs outside, but it is certainly a 
‘lonely case of real academic synthesis. 


We teachers are still a competitive lot. We 
must rush our boys through our own specific courses 
toward a standardized goal. We must see to it that 
our algebra 1s done, whether a boy’s history and 
Latin progress or not. We must see that a boy 
gets his Latin, whether his spelling is up to mark or 
not. We must keep him after school on spelling 
when he sacrifices spelling to biology or history. 


When a boy’s mind is nicely warmed up to crystal- 
lography, or to a discussion of racial traits in history, 
CLANG! goes a bell, and he must shift his body 
‘and mind and spirit off into Cesar, Cicero or Ge- 
nung. 


But Johnny has set down concretely a definite case 
of possible co-relation, of time-saving, of class-syn- 
thesis. And besides that, he has written an excellent 
letter home to his mother, telling her about it! 


He came down tonight to let me read it. We 
talked very little. I believe about all I had to say 
was: “John, that’s simply fine!” 


13 
Too warm for a fire this evening, when Dummy 
came down to talk. I lit the stub of a yellow candle, 
and set it on the broad arm of my big chair. We 
watched the single flame together in silence for a 


THE REAL. BOY 155 


while. Electric sea-blue at its base, burning gold 
through its center, musky yellow and vanishing into 
elusive wraiths of burnt sienna at its peak .. . how 
warm the little candle threw its beams... . like 
a good deed, in a naughty world. 


The black wick curled over and poked a head of 
fiery crimson out from the blue of the flame. 
Dummy asked why the flame curled over like that, 
instead of standing straight. 


I told him how good old Mr. Paine, of Silver 
Bay, had been bothered with the old-time necessity 
of snuffing candle-wicks. He guessed that they must 
be frequently cut to rid them of accumulating 
carbon, which prevented thorough oxidation at the 
end. If the wick could only reach out into the air, 
it might oxygenate without carbonizing; in fact he 
found that it did so when he bent the wick outward 
and kept it so bent. 


At last he hit upon the simple device of making 
candle-wicks of three strands of string instead of 
two, and of plaiting these strands together, with 
an extra hard pull on one of the strands, tending 
to curl the whole plait in the direction of the pull. 
He found that, just as the strands were curved in 
the plaiting, so too, they curved when burning in a 
candle, poking the end of the composite string suf- 
ficiently out of the body of the flame to bring it in 
contact with the air, where it oxygenated fully and 
glowingly, without accumulating carbon. 


Dummy looked at the candle, smiled, and re- 
marked, “Well, Pll be damned!”’ 


156 DHE REAL BOY 


14 

Hawkins loves birds. He delights in listening to 
Kellog’s bird-songs on our Vic. He spends class- 
periods in the woods, sitting quietly to await some 
stray chirper who will sing a few bars to him that 
he may judge whether Kellog is right or wrong in 
his interpretation. He tries to write compositions 
about birds, but the little fellows seem too swiftly 
elusive for his thought and pen. Some of the boys 
say he takes advantage of my faith in his bird-love, 
and puts over a good time on me when he ought to 
be grinding away in class or study-hall. But I know 
that Hawkins loves birds. 


We arose before dawn one morning last week to 
listen to bird-song together. He met me at the 
edge of camp, a green bird-book in his hand. We 
walked through the squdgy swamp and over the re- 
silient marshland toward the western beechwood. 
Suddenly a great brown mallard duck rose noisily 
from a yard beyond our feet and flew over the hill- 
range to our right. 


“Golly! there must be a nest there!’’ And Haw- 
kins darted toward the spot where the mother had 
risen. He almost plunged into the midst of eight 
brown eggs, smoky-warm in the coolness of morning 
and nested in filmiest down. 


“Can I lie here until she comes back?’ And I 
left the lad lying still on his tummy a few yards 
from the nest, with the stiff marsh grass beaten 
back in a swath that he might see the mother bird 


plainly. 


Peis Re A Te BOW 157 


That evening, by Kitty’s fireside, he related in 
sparkle-eyed excitement the story of his adventure. 
The mother had returned, most uneasily and doubt- 
ful, finally to settle on her eggs, only to fly away 
again, straight northward as before when he moved 
a bit for comfort. 


“T left her because I knew it would bother her 
to have me nearby. I guess those eggs will hatch 
better if we leave her alone.”’ 


I have visited the mother since then. Twice she 
has remained, motionless but keenly observant with 
her dark hazel eyes; twice she has flown over the 
hill. I shall remember her, tenderly, but I shall 
more joyfully remember Hawkins, who missed a 
morning of schooling to gain a few intense rich 
hours of adventurous living in our waving marsh- 


land. . 

15 
A glorious tree grows in my den. Its short 
branches are laden with hardwary, drygoodsy fruit. 
Two base-ball mitts, one soldier’s kit, one duffle- 
bag, one ruck-sack; a hunting-knife, hatchet and 
compass hanging from a web belt; three wool skull- 
caps, four poncho-straps; one red and one tartan 
bandanna; two first-aid kits, one trench shovel, one 
Stetson army hat, and one Japanese lucky-pup on 


a silk cord. 


In one corner of this den of mine stand a rifle and 
a shot-gun. On the wall nearby hangs a Colt re- 
volver in a Texas case (relic of my Mexican days). 
On my desk is an ash-tray, and a blackened virgin- 
briar pipe which I seldom smoke, but which seems 
to belong there. 


158 THER RAE BOY 


These items are not for atmosphere; they are at- 
mosphere. ‘They belong. ‘They help keep me kid- 
dish at heart. I like them. ‘The boys like them. 
I ought to have a fishing-outfit and a set of traps; 
but I do not care for fishing, and I dislike the idea 
of trapping; they wouldn’t belong. 


I mention them today because of my pipe. John- 
son was in this morning and spied it. “I never 
saw you smoke,” he said. ‘Thought you didn’t. 
Glad you do. It doesn’t seem quite right for a man 
not to smoke. I’m off tobacco until I’m twenty- 
one, on a bet. But I feel like losing the bet and 
getting a pipe sometimes. What’s your idea of 
smoking for boys?” 


I told him my idea was like his father’s; that 
it is by far better for a lad to keep a bet against 
it until he was of age, at least. In that way one 
would avoid any possible, even slight, damage to 
growth and development; and one would lay the 
foundation for a possible genuine temperance in the 
use of a thing which may, or may not, have a defi- 
nitely human value. The physiology, psychology 
and perhaps the philosophical background of tobacco 
has yet to be written. I am not at all certain that 
a custom, fast becoming universal among men, and 
threatening to invade womankind, is either good or 
evil. It is probably a little of both, and presumably 
more evil than good not because of its intrinsic self, 
as because of our natural tendency to intemperance 
in the use of all things pleasurable. 

“Well, I’m glad if you do smoke, you keep your 
pipe out there on your desk and not hidden away 


TREPa ak ACE BI OLY 159 


somewheres, out of sight of us boys,’ was John- 
son’s parting word. 


16 


Treadwell brings Rover to class every day. 
Rover lies curled in his master’s lap, or asleep be- 
neath his chair, silent and comfortable. The de- 
votion of these two is touching. If the dog would 
behave as well elsewhere as here, I don’t see why 
he has to lie outside the door in the cold. I pass 
him there sometimes, and he looks up, big eyed, 
at me, entreating intercession in behalf of a place 
beside his master. 


‘Please have Treadwell take that dog out of class, 
he bothers me,” piped up Tuffy Hyatt today. 


‘““What’s the matter with Rover?” I asked. 


‘Make me jealous. I want a dog, too. Seeing 
him there with Tread and both of them so happy, 
makes me kind of sick.” 


I wish every boy in my classes had a dog. I 
wish that dog would come to class. It would be 
up to the boy to maintain such order that the dog 
could stay, like Treadwell’s. I sometimes think a 
dog in the lap of a boy is worth more in point of 
boy-culture than all the English and history I can 
pump into a lad from behind my battered desk. 


At times I make a round of the little cabins down in 
camp at night. My welcome always seems warmer 
when a dog rises, with his master, to greet me in out 


160 oD ED RSE AUT © 8) cy 


of the cold. ‘This bunking in your own cabin, among 
your traps on the wall, beside your black stove with 
water warming on it for cocoa between study-hour 
and taps, and your dog under the table; this is 
living! 


There is a movement before the faculty to es- 
tablish a dog-colony and systematize dogdom. ‘The 
tikes are to be kenneled individually, way down near 
the woods somewhere, that their howling may not 
disturb professorial sleep at night. A committee 
of boys is to be appointed to regulate the feeding 
and exercise of the dogs, en masse. I trust this 
motion will fail. I want the dogs to live at home 
with the boys. I shall exert all my small voting 
strength to that end. 


And I hope the dogs will continue to slip out 
into the moonlight sometimes and howl to their 
warm little hearts’ content. 


17 
Grady came back, as I expected he would. Said 
our talk had set him up. Told me what he’d been 
doing. Still a little worried about his sex life. 
Said he hadn’t got it under control. 


“Grady,” I said, “your trouble is largely physi- 
ological. You’re making it a mental struggle. 
You’ve got a wrong slant on sex. You still see 
something dangerous in dream-emissions, you still 
think you’re ruining your health when you bring 
on an emission consciously. That is about as gro- 
tesque as though you were terrified at dreaming 
about eating too much mince pie, or thought you 


Te EPR ALL.©. B Ony 161 


were bound for the hospital if you overate on 


Welsh rarebit. 


‘Mince pie and rarebit are not the best of foods. 
Dreams and masturbation are not the best forms 
of relief from sexual tension. But these things are 
not dangerous unless you become a glutton in their 
indulgence. Masturbation can sometimes grow into 
a harmful habit, just as drinking or smoking can. 
It is founded on an appetite stronger than anything 
except hunger. One sometimes feels as intense a 
desire to satisfy sex hunger as one does when he 
has missed three or four meals and wants a steak. 
It is unpleasant to starve either sex or food hunger; 
but we need fear neither until conditions are ex- 
treme. 


‘The world says you must wait until you’re old 
enough to be married before you satisfy sex hunger 
normally. I guess the world is right in requiring 
a period of discipline, or training, like the American 
Indians did when they made a young man wait 
until he had built a house and killed a deer and 
seen a sign before he could choose a wife. Look 
at it that way. Do the best you can under a set 
of trial conditions. But don’t worry. 


“Tf you can, let dreams take care of your physi- 
ological sex life. If you sometimes go under to 
appetite and get relief consciously, look at it as 
though you had broken training for your team by 
eating pie, or smoking a cigarette. Cuss yourself 
out for a minute, then buck up and forget it and go 
ahead trying to work and play as best you know how 
while on the road to the place where your sex life 


162 ‘DE. REA BOY 


can be normal. Just don’t let the thing haunt you 
or worry you. There’s nothing there worth worry- 
ing about, and the worst thing you can possibly 
do to yourself is to let sex get muddling around in 
your mind as such a mysterious and awful thing. 
In reality it’s as simple as digesting and eliminating 
food. Civilization has made it monstrously com- 
plex, mystical and terrifying, distorting our view and 
making us miserable. 


“Tf you want to think about it, come down and 
think out loud to me. That’s a safety-valve, as it 
were. I can talk to you in your present mood. I 
couldn’t before, when you were mushy. Just re- 
member that there’s probably not a grown-up healthy 
man that you know who has not gone through this 
same sort of thing, experienced what you have, wor- 
ried like you, and come out all right, just as you 
will. Now beat it and get some sleep before mid- 
night.” 


Such conversations between teacher and pupil usu- 
ally began, tritely enough, on tomorrow’s lesson, 
yesterday’s composition, or an immediate question 
concerning an event of today. Face to face in the 
seclusion of a firelit room, however, we soon felt 
an atmosphere of leisure and comradery which led 
speech away from “the petty round of irritating 
concerns. and duties’ and off into the greener pas- 
tures of the personal and intimate; from mind- 
stuff to heart-stuff, as it were. Differences of age, 
knowledge, position seemed to melt away into a 
chatty oneness between boy and boy. We felt at 


ete RAB AAC (BB OvY 163 


home with one another. There was nothing of class- 
room tension, no need to consider what the other 
fellows might be thinking, not a trace of the com- 
petitive or exhibitionist element. A stray question 
or remark would break the ice for one of those 
friendly personal exchanges which reveal ourselves 
to one another as we truly are, not as we are sup- 
posed to be. ‘The word education, from educo, to 
draw out, fitted snugly to its simplest definition. 


CHAPTER VIII 


NAT WARREN READS NIETZSCHE 


In the days of one’s youth, in one’s period of ap- 
prenticeship, it is of far more importance to make 
oneself an effective instrument than it is to know 
precisely how and where the instrument is going to 
be employed. Temper the iron; sharpen the blade; 
and rest assured that the world will use it by and by. 
—S. P. SHERMAN. 


I 


SEEDS threw Nat Warren into my classroom one 
afternoon. Seeds was fat and burly. Nat was 
small and slight. The boy came through the door as 
though he had been hurled from a catapult. He 
literally tumbled into a chair in a rear corner of the 
room and sat looking out of the window, trying to 
conceal insistent tears. After a moment’s surprise 
we proceeded with our work. I said nothing to 
Nat and he said nothing to me. After class he 
bolted out of the room and vanished. 

For several days Nat came to class, sat gloomily 
in his corner and disappeared as soon as the session 
was over. Finally he stopped at my desk and asked 
me what I wanted him to do. 

‘What do you yourself want to do, Nat?” I 


asked. 
164 


Nera REALL BAD TY 165 


“T don’t want to do anything at all in this class,”’ 
he answered. ; 

“All right, Nat, continue doing nothing.” And 
the matter was ended for a time. A day or two 
later I met the boy on our campus and asked him if 
he had yet discovered what he wanted to do in the 
group, of which he was at least a silent part. He 
looked at me with the hard, cold eyes of a self- 
centered boy for a moment, then glanced off up the 
hill toward official headquarters and said: 

‘“There’s just two things I want to do. One is 
to quit this school. ‘The other is to beat up Mr. 
Seeds. I'd like to smash his face.” 

‘Why don’t you do one or both of the things 
you’d most like to do, Nat?” The lad looked back 
at me registering surprise and incredulity. 

“Td run away if it wasn’t for my dad. He’s sent 
me here, and it would hurt him if I beat it. He’s 
been mighty good to me and I don’t want to hurt 
him. And I’m not big enough or strong enough to 
smash Seeds.”’ 

‘Would you like to be strong enough to lick Mr. 
Seeds? If you thought you could do it, would you 
try to get that strong?” 

“Sure I would. I’d work ten years on it.”’ 

“All right, Nat, begin with a bit of work for 
English. Come to my room after dinner. [I'll give 
you a book about Theodore Roosevelt, telling how 
he got strong because he was sick and tired of being 
weak. Read that and then we'll talk about the next 


166 LE a Raman BIO yy: 


step. Write me a letter, or a composition, some- 
time, about the school and the teachers, and about 
why Mr. Seeds threw you into my class as he did. 
Perhaps there are two sides to this. Id like to 
know the whole story.” 

Nat came in the evening. Besides the Roosevelt 
biography, I gave him several copies of a physical 
culture magazine, suggesting that he look them 
through. I do not think he quite believed I could 
be serious about getting strong so that he could 
realize his belligerent ambition. His glance was a 
trifle furtive, but I caught hope in it also, the hope 
that he had found a friend. He left me with the 
first real smile that I had seen upon his face. 

There followed from this fireside chat a series of 
adventures in friendship and teacherhood, covering 
ten years in time and thousands of miles in space. 
Were I a novelist instead of an amateur in educa- 
tion, I should turn Nat’s story into a counter- 
plotted romance of intense personal relationships 
between boy and teacher, boy and father, boy and 
girl, boy and woman, boy and boy. 

Suffice it in this book to touch only on a few facets 
of the lad’s career. ‘They throw bright glints of 
light upon certain influences which school has upon 
the evolving character of youth. 

Of all the: mercurial, ubiquitous, versatile, kalei- 
doscopic kids I ever knew, Nat was the apex and 
champion. Two years after his resolve to get 
strong and “beat up Seeds’’ this erstwhile sallow, 


TH NRO AL, «BOY. 167 


nervous, somewhat sickly youth was helping me teach 
swimming to a bunch of boys. He taught them 
boxing also, and trapeze, soccer, football, hockey, 
wrestling, jiu-jitsu and gymnasium stunts. His 
muscles were hard as a full blown motor tire. His 
nerves were quick as those of a squirrel. His smile 
was almost perpetual. He incarnated a contagious 
euphoria that spread out on all sides among the 
boys and made him a perennial center of active en- 
thusiasms. He no longer thought of smashing 
Seeds. He now enjoyed the thrill of being strong, 
as boys go, and of putting strength into vigorous 
action among his fellows. Pointing at Seeds across 
the campus one day, he smiled and said: ‘Now 
that I feel as though I could lick him, I don’t want 
to. It’s better to be friends. He’s not half so bad 
as I thought.” 


II 


With increasing physical strength there came to 
Nat a growing restlessness and wanderlust. He 
stuck valiantly to his self-imposed training but in the 
period between school and summer-camp he caused 
Seeds to come to me, saying: “I told you so. I 
said you couldn’t keep that kid at work. He’s a 
vagrant in body and mind. Why you want to try 
to make a councilor out of such material I can’t see. 
Now you'll get just what I mean.” 

For Nat had disappeared. I found him in a hotel 


168 CSET Heats roman aabs COSY: 


running an elevator: “God! Mr. Hamilton, just 
had to get away for a while. Be back before camp 
opens. Going to stick to my job. Just must havea 
change after such a dose of school. Foolishness but 
it'll do me good. I’ll come back. Don’t tell I’m 
here.” And the lad was off with two fat ladies and 
a thin man into the upper regions of his new domain. 

He did come back. Before the summer was gone 
he had won over Seeds, who offered him a job during 
the following school term as director of gymnasium 
work. All Nat had needed was being believed in, 
being trusted where he was not understood. His 
quick, temperamental somersaults, his blundering 
into places where cautious pedagogues feared to 
tread and his explosive emotional outbursts over 
right and wrong as he saw them led one sometimes 
to doubt the soundness of his heart. I had taken a 
chance on trusting that boy, believing in him through 
whatever happened for as long as my patience would 
last. It was sorely strained sometimes. Once or 
twice it almost snapped. For a time it became part 
of a real endurance test in teacherhood and friend- 
ship. I have always rejoiced that my patience won. 

Nat has proved to me through years of struggle 
and turmoil in the gradual integration of a strong 
and positive character that a boy is a creature worth 
trusting and forgiving not seven times, but seventy 
times seven times. Again and again he has brought 
home to me the partial truth of those homely lines: 


TER EAL BOY 169° 


“Better trust all and be deceived, 
And weep that trust and that deceiving, 
Than doubt one heart, that, if believed, 
Had blessed one’s life with true believing. 


“‘Oh, in this mocking world too fast 
The doubting fiend o’ertakes our youth: 
Better be cheated to the last 
Than lose the blessed hope of truth.” 


My relationship with this boy has involved very 
much of the same feeling that one would experience 
in handling a porcupine. He has bristled with mis- 
takes of both feeling and judgment toward the world 
of his fellows like a prickly-pear. But those of you 
who have tasted the luscious heart of a tuna when 
thirsty on a horseback ride across a desert know 
that one can well forgive the fruit its protective 
habiliment of vicious little thorns. So, too, with 
Nat. Through all his primitively defensive carapace 
of belligerent and egoistic reactions toward his fel- 
low-kind, I have felt the truth which Emerson spoke 
for us when he said: “All young persons thirst for 
a real existence for a real object—for something 
great and good which they shall do with their heart. 
Meanwhile they all pack gloves, or keep books, or 
travel, or draw indentures, or cajole old women.” 
So with Nat. He thirsted for something great and 
good that he might do with all his mind, and with 
all his heart, and with all his soul. 

Nat was quintessentially boy. He was of the 


170 TER Le BON 


energic, restless, experimental stuff that makes boot- 
leggers and foreign missionaries, gamblers or fa- 
natics on social reform. He believed, doubted, ac- 
cepted, tested, and rejected things with equal vigor. 
He was a darting, blundering intellectual chaos dur- 
ing his early adolescent years but, mothlike, he 
seemed ever fluttering fitfully toward a light. Curt- 
osity led him and self-will drove him on. At Inter- 
vale he set up a barber-shop and did violence to the 
boy hair crop. He ran a clandestine store where 
one might buy cookies, sweet drinks and junk. Ex- 
pert at matching pennies and Yankee trading he was 
always relatively affluent. He taught table-manners 
by fining his fellows a nickel for every error of eti- 
quette. Afflicted with a huge boil, he exhibited it to 
curious youth at a penny a look. Boys who made 
bowls, candlesticks, paper-cutters and ink-wells at 
the metal shop found a ready purchaser for their 
wares in Nat who resold them at double their cost 
or gave them away with éclat. Dissatisfied with 
the school food, he rode freight cars to town and 
brought back commissary supplies for himself and 
his fellows at risk of life or limb. Studying only 
enough to “get by,” he yet came to me often witha 
deep curiosity for light upon things obscure or irri- 
tating to his unfolding mind. 

Left-handed, Nat disliked writing. Compositions 
or letters were a dread. Finally I elicited a good 
piece of writing from the lad. I asked him what 
he would most like to talk about at that particular 


HHS READY BOY Tr 


minute. He said: ‘This place and its teachers; 
but I can’t do that, you wouldn’t let me write what 
I think.” With my promise that his product would 
remain a secret between us, he scrawled out a boyish 
indictment of authority such as a teacher seldom 
sees. Years afterward the boy’s father produced 
this effusion from a box of precious letters and 
asked me to read it to him. I had completely for- 
gotten its text, remembered its spirit, the same spirit 
of rebellion against authority as made us revolt 
against taxation without representation, and was 
later incarnated in the tyrannies of Kaiser William 
and Mitchell Palmer. But its major theme was an 
invective against unbelief. 


‘“T don’t care much about Seeds swatting me on 
the head or firing me into that room but I hate for 
him not to believe me when [ tell him my father said 
I didn’t have to take any English, that’s what hurts 
me most.” 


This composition, of some eight close-packed 
pages, broke the ice. It liberated boy-thought into 
written boy-word. ‘Thereafter writing was easier 
and more pleasant, a channel of expression, a safety- 
valve, a confessional, a weapon of defense. ‘This led 
me to shift from suggesting subjects for written work 
in class, and to ask for written expressions of emo- 
tion. The shift seemed to take us from exercises 
in memory and chirography into crystallizing on 
paper a sheer spontaneity of spirit. When some- 


172 SHER A LB OY 


thing was not ready to bubble over, inkwise onto 
paper, we waited until it was. 


Ill 


My boys browsed in their reading. I believed 
they would read whatever really caught their inter- 
est and kindled their imagination. Bernard Shaw 
once told Henri Bernstein, that “you must be care- 
ful what books you give to adults, for they may be 
corrupted; but children may read anything. Chil- 
dren up to the age of sixteen may read anything 
and everything. After that age their books should 
be carefully chosen for them.” I felt this exagger- 
ated dictum to be true only in so far as my boys felt 
free to discuss their reading with us oldsters who 
perhaps have gained somewhat of a perspective on 
life. A book like Jurgen, however, would be about 
as intelligible and as interesting to a fourteen-year- 
old girl as the book of Revelation and would hardly 
need to be discussed at all. I was surprised, how- 
ever, when Nat, sixteen years of age, brought 
Zarathustra down to my fireside and opened it at a 
page which he had diligently scored with red crayon. 


“Verily, not in backworlds and redeeming blood- 
drops; but in the body do they also believe most; 
and their own body is for them the thing in itself. 
Hearken, my brethren, to the voice of the healthy 
body; a more upright and pure voice it is . . . per- 
fect and square-built; and it speaketh of the mean- 
ing of the earth.” 


THE REAL BOY 178 


He sprang to his feet, snapped the book together, 
waved it twice around his head, then whirled into a 
waiting chair, exclaiming: “Gosh! isn’t that good 
cospel? Isn’t that better than Sunday-school? Lis- 
ten!” 


‘Passion for power: but who would call it passion, 
when the height longeth to stoop for power! Verily, 
nothing sick or diseased is there in such longing and 
descending !”’ 


“This fellow is hard, Mr. Hamilton. Hard as 
rocks. No Y. M.C. A. mush about him. [ like this 
bird. Didn’t know philosophers talked like that. 
Always thought they haggled about the fourth di- 
mension or something. This fellow talks about life. 
Why don’t folks like him? Was he a German? 
Did he really cause the war?” I looked at the clear- 
eyed lad, sitting tensely on the edge of my big chair, 
one hand gripping the arm-rest, the other clench- 
ing the book as though it were a missile about to 
be hurled, and replied: 

‘Tm glad you found Nietzsche. Fits your present 
mood. Lots to be assimilated from him if inter- 
preted aright. Great poet. Likely to be misread, 
like Darwin. One can apply him all wrong. Some 
folks need a bit of his iron in their system. I don’t 
think that you do. You’re hard enough. Too hard 
in spots. And you haven’t learned the hardness of 
what folks call the Golden Rule. Just try that out 
literally for a day. See if it isn’t as hard as any 


174 TR OR BA TB Oy: 


of Nietzsche’s aphorisms. See if it isn’t happier, 
too. I’m all with you for the strong body, and for 
the earth-things; but don’t get it into your head 
that being a Christian is mushy. ‘The Y is partly a 
product of Christianity and partly of churchianity. 
It has its soft and mushy spots, but it carries a 
harder backbone than you think. You know I am 
not much of a churchman, Nat. I talk to you not 
in terms of church or philosophy but of friendship. 
I should like to see you mix a little of the gospel 
of St. Mark with your newly discovered gospel of 
the superman. ‘There are different orders and quali- 
ties of power. I should like to talk to you about 
them some day when we have more time.”’ 

Years later, when we read Nat’s composition to- 
gether, his father said tome: ‘I believe at’ was 
Nietzsche who formed my boy’s philosophy. I see 
in his thought and action so much of the will to 
power, so much of primitive, caveman hardness coy- 
ering whatever of finer spirit there is in him. Why 
should a young man come in contact with such ideas? 
Where did he find Nietzsche? What is the anti- 
dote?”’ 

In watching Nat’s meteoric career through ado- 
lescence into manhood, I wondered often if we hu- 
mans are not relatively immune to any ideas other 
than those which fit our own type and temperament. 
I saw in Nat’s mind a perpetual battle-ground be- 
tween conflicting sets of ideas. If he heard, on Sun- 
day: “Blessed are they that mourn,” he read on 


Agi vB, BAe: BeOvye 175 


Monday: “I am hostile to the spirit of gravity, 
deadly hostile, supremely hostile, originally hostile!” 
If the lad went to church, he came to me afterward 
to read to me with delight: “Oh, just look at those 
tabernacles which those priests have built for them- 
selves! Churches they call their sweet-smelling 
caves! Oh, that falsified light, that mustified air! 
Where the soul may not fly aloft to its height! Only 
when the clear sky looketh again through ruined 
roofs, and down upon grass and red poppies on- 
ruined walls—will I again turn my heart to the seats 
of this God.”’ While, of the clergy: ‘‘As corpses 
they thought to live; in black draped they their 
corpses; even in their talk do I still feel the evil 
flavor of chatnel houses.’ And of good or evil: 
‘‘As if there were but one foot-bridge to the future!”’ 

Nat was essentially sensitive to ideas; but he had 
no use for grave ones, for solemnity, for any but 
active, sparkling, happy ones. ‘Since humanity 
came into being, man hath enjoyed himself too little: 
that alone, my brethren, is our original sin!” How 
deftly, how snugly, such a sentence as this would 
square with the mind of such a resiliently plastic 
organism of muscle and nerve as Nat’s! He was 
one of those whom Thomas a Kempis describes as 
companions of Christ’s table, but not of his absti- 
nence; who desire to rejoice with him, but not to 
suffer with him; who would follow him to the break- 
ing of bread, but not to the drinking of the chalice 
of his passion. He was the stuff which Joseph Con- 


176 A REALE BOs: 


rad has so remarkably crystallized in the hero of 
his story, “Youth.” He fought his fears and his 
slumps, and laid them. He sprang back always into 
the buoyancy of spirit which a thoroughly healthy 
body creates. Yet his ego (if there really is such 
a thing) seemed to harden perceptibly under the 
concept of a will-to-power, and of an end justifying 
a means. ‘This worried me, as his teacher, for I 
was not immune, as Nat was, to gravity and felt my- 
self afflicted with a sort of proselytic interest in the 
welfare of his soul. I wanted him to be exultantly 
happy, but I had learned, from my Stockbridge- 
Pollock days that indeed there is more than one foot- 
bridge to one’s future. Nat was typical of the genus 
Boy, but he was an exaggerated type, emphatic and 
spectacular in most of the qualities that make up 
boyhood. He was a good laboratory specimen, as it 
were, in which to study the psychology and educa- 
tional possibilities of adolescence. I could almost 
see ideas at work in his brain, and I could watch for 
and note results of ideas in action, in growth of 
judgment, in perspective and feeling toward life. 

My influence as a teacher was tested hard in this 
boy. ‘The artistry of teacherhood was tried and 
years later, when I talked with Nat’s father, I felt 
that somehow it was found wanting. 

‘Thus far you seem to have failed to introduce 
my boy to the life of the spirit,’ said Mr. Warren. 
“He still lives in a cave and comes out with a club. 
I believe the finer qualities are there. His mother 


AE Geo? ROW AL Ta". B © yg Wi, 


and father have discovered the higher happiness of 
the spiritual world, the world of sympathy and 
ideals. Both have lived in it and found it more 
joyous a place to live than anywhere else. Why has 
not Nat ever journeyed there? I am saddened at his 
will-to-power, his seeming insensitivity to finer things. 
Especially am I saddened when I think of the old 
agaoce me her fruit talleth not/far from the tree.” 

Yet I had introduced Nat again to the New 
Testament, I had exposed him to Thomas a Kempis, | 
I had reasoned with him by firelight, I had argued 
with him belligerently on our walks together. Years 
after our Intervale days he said to me: “Logically 
I get your point of view. I see something in it. I[ 
think you’re right. But I feel the other way. Can’t 
help it. Nothing has been able to take the place 
of the ideas of strength, will, power and hardness 
away from me. Guess I’m a selfish cuss. All I can 
say is that | am grateful that you gave me an anti- 
dote for this sort of thing. One needs to know the 
other side. ‘That’s only good sportsmanship. It 
has helped me keep steadier than I might have 
stayed, given me perspective, balance. I sometimes 
wish I could feel toward the golden rule the way I 
do toward the will to power. It simply doesn’t 
work on me that way! I guess ideas fit us for what 
we are deep down inside, don’t they?” 

At Intervale Nat was the only boy who, to my 
knowledge, read Nietzsche. I believe he shared his 
copy of Zarathustra with Amo his cabin mate. But 


178 EE RE AG BOY 


I got no reactions from that son of a somewhat 
mystical astronomer. As for the other boys, their 
reading was in other pastures and only a few pre- 
cocious youngsters and three or four of the older 
boys well on toward the end of high-school days 
showed signs of interest in philosophy from books. 
Let this chapter on Nat Warren, then, be a bridge 
between my chats with boys by firelight and ember- 
glow and our acquaintance together with books. 


CHAPTER IX 


ON THE WAY OF BOYS WITH BOOKS 


The intellect will always profit by the acquisition 
of any knowledge whatsoever, for thus what is use- 
less will be expelled from it, and what is fruitful 
will remain. It is impossible either to hate or to 
love a thing without first acquiring a knowledge of 
ite 

—lLEONARDO DA VINCI. 

I 


In our Intervale library the boys read ‘‘Popular 
Science,’ ‘‘Popular Mechanics,” ‘‘The Outlook,”’ 
‘The Independent” and the “Literary Digest.” In 
their rooms I found stray copies of “Snappy Stories,” 
‘The Cosmopolitan,” “‘Detective Stories” and ‘“The 
Smart Set.” Mr. Mencken philosophized in the 
latter at this time. Some of the older lads enjoyed 
the wine of his occasional wit and the perplexing 
smoke of what they called his “hard-boiled” attitude 
toward contemporary life. Most of the boys did 
not like his points of view, but they read them, and 
they thought and talked about them. 

Years later some of these boys bought Mencken’s 
little essays in book form, or borrowed mine. They 
seemed to share my own feeling toward them. It 
was akin to the physical sensation I experienced one 

179 


180 |UD HGR ALS Bi sy; 


day when eating vanilla ice-cream covered with beef- 
gravy on a bet. Mencken temporarily upset one’s 
sense of values. He would ask, for instance, ‘‘What 
causes men to be faithful to their wives: habit, fear, 
poverty, lack of imagination, lack of enterprise, stu- 
pidity, religion? . . . Why are we all so greatly 
affected by statements that we know are not true? 
e.g. in Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech, the Declaration 
of Independence and the CIII Psalm.”’ He would 
say things so contrary to our historic texts; as of 
Lincoln for instance: 


“One hears in the Sunday-schools that Abe was 
an austere and pious fellow, constantly taking the 
name of God in whispers, just as one reads in the 
school history-books that he was a shining idealist, 
holding all his vast powers by the magic of an inner 
and ineffable virtue. Imagine a man getting on in 
American politics, interesting and enchanting the 
boobery, sawing off the horns of other politicians, 
elbowing his way through primaries and conventions, 
by the magic of virtue! Abe, in fact, must have 
been a fellow highly skilled at the great art of gum- 
shoeing. . . . His official portraits both in prose 
and in daguerreotype show him wearing the mien of 
a man about to be hanged; one never sees him smil- 
ing. Nevertheless, one hears that, until he emerged 
from Illinois, they always put the women, children 
and clergy to bed when he got a few gourds of corn 
aboard, and it is a matter of inescapable record that 
his career in the State legislature was indistinguish- 
able from that of a Tammany Nietzsche.” 


WHEY (REAE -B Oy, 181 


In boy language the two attitudes of mind which 
would most frequently arise from a case of this 
kind would be: ‘‘Him! he wasn’t so perfect as we’ve 
been made to believe he was!”’ And: “Gee! what 
a good job he did with himself in spite of what he 
had to go through!” ‘The first reaction would of 
course be the most common. To lead to the second 
viewpoint is a teacher’s most frequent job. It has 
been a delight to me quite often to help reconstruct 
a hero with a boy after an attack of iconoclasm or 
of doubt. With any attempt at censorship of knowl- 
edge, as an easy way out of such a taxing piece of 
work as reconstruction sometimes involves, I have 
almost religiously had nothing to do. 

I recall my ire when, to get Herndon’s “Lincoln” 
from the Boston Public Library I had to go to a 
man of influence and have the book pried loose from 
the shelf expurgatorius by special edict. I saw and 
see no reason why any American boy should not know 
how Lincoln escaped by so small a margin his first 
entrance upon matrimony. I recall with amusement 
my first acquaintance with the fact that Washington 
had red hair, and see no reason why any brick-top 
of a school kid should not point with pride to this 
historic circumstance. That Walt Whitman was an 
old bachelor who gave to the world five or six ille- 
gitimate children as well as a volume or two of 
poems may be a slightly different matter. I see no 
reason why we should deliberately acquaint our 
youngsters with the domestic and ex-domestic rela- 


182 Dy EPEC RT AT. Gry 


tions of great poets like Whitman, or great novelists 
like Wells, or charming intellectual gymnasts like 
Mr. Mencken. By their works ye shall know them 
for what they are to the world, and as for our boys 
and girls, the less they are acquainted with Havelock 
Ellis’ ‘Studies in the Psychology of Sex,”’ and the 
better they know the spirit and letter of his “Little 
Essays on Love and Virtue” the richer will be the 
background and the stronger will be the foundations 
of their beginning life’s adventure in pursuit of hap- 
piness. This, at least, was my attitude toward my 
boys in relation to their reading. I preferred that 
they know that Amy Lowell occasionally wrote good 
verse than that she was supposed to smoke cigars in 
her bathtub, but if they stood upon a pile of gossip 
and peeked over the transom of her bathroom, I 
tried to turn that experience into something as con- 
structive as I could. 

That the day-dreams, the ambitions, the resolu- 
tions and adolescent philosophy of my boys were 
touched deeply by their reading I have had occa- 
sional proof and very frequent intimation. The 
romantic chivalry of Tennyson I have seen strike 
root into most unpromising mental soil. Neihardt 
and Masefield and Conrad have kindled imaginary 
epics in boy-souls that have worked toward, if not 
into, a vital realization in life’s adventure. The 
poetry of Nietzsche most vibrantly touched Nat and 
the manner of its working within him reminds me 
of what Professor Sherman has pointed out regard- 


PLA eR CAT, 1B ny, 183 


ing Sir Philip Sidney who, “following Aristotle, 
placed poetry above history and philosophy be- 
cause of its power to kindle will to action; because 
of its superior potency in the formation of char- 
acter and in leading and drawing us to as high a per- 
fection ‘as our degenerate souls, made worse by their 
clay lodgings, can be capable of.’ ”’ 

I remember so well the evening which brought 
Polixander to my hearthside. He read Robert Ser- 
vice aloud while I sketched in charcoal from plaster 
casts. Coming to the lines: 


“And hunger, not of the belly kind, that’s banished 


with bacon and beans; 
But the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a home 
and all that it means. 


He asked: ‘‘Were you ever hungry like that? Is 
wanting to be in love just another way of being 
hungry?” 

I laid aside my charcoal and took from my shelf 
a much lent copy of Luther Gulick’s ‘‘Dynamic of 
Manhood” in which we read together of the several 
hungers of man: the hunger for food, for friends, 
for woman, and for God. 

The power of that book lies in the fact that Doc- 
tor Gulick was primarily a poet, and only afterwards 
a physician, a reformer, an educator and an or- 
ganizer. Polixander, a tall, awkward, sensitive, 
hard-working Russian Jew devoured it as a hungry 
boy would end a caramel pie. It fitted his type of 


184 THE (READ BOY 


mind. Yet, too, it fitted Nat’s, and if ever there was 
a physical and mental contrast between two boys of 
seemingly opposite types, I had one here. The very 
vividness of their contrast led me to wonder again 
about one’s predilection or immunity to ideas, and 
to hope that at least a few of the highest and finest 
conceptions to which humanity is heir might fit 
equally well the hard-fisted, plunging, erratic and 
feudal Nat and the open-handed, reticent, studiously 
consistent and socialistic Polixander. 

But do not mistake me. My fireplace did not 
become a psychological laboratory. It remained a 
place of friendship, and my speculations came after- 
wards, in retrospect. If it partook at all of lessons 
or teacherhood, it was only in the old Greek sense 
of schole, leisure, and leisure to be oneself, spon- 
taneous and unafraid. 


II 


My concern was with what a book might lead a 
boy to think and feel and do, not with what he could 
remember about its content. Naturally I was at 
sword-points with college entrance examinations. 
They test memory and fragmentary knowledge, not 
feeling or wisdom. ‘They are aimed at a boy’s head 
and not at his heart. I was not averse to testing 
memory, or probing for scraps of knowledge; but 
these impending exams seemed constantly to shunt 
us off, as teacher and student, from what I believed 


eee RE ATs Bi iy 185 


was education for life. Yet Stanley Hall, one of 
the most radical of America’s educators, wrote me: 


“You are up against a monstrosity and tyranny 
which enslaves our whole secondary system. There 
would be danger that your school would be dropped 
from the accredited list, and that would lose it 
students. It would have to go over to the indepen- 
dents, who are out in the cold, and the steam roller 
would go triumphantly over you as though nothing 
had happened.” 


This letter came on a day when I snatched from 
my smaller boys that thick, ugly,  stiff-jointed, 
scratchy and utterly imbecile “Mother Language’”’ 
text and consigned it to my repudiated book-shelf. 
This merciless rhetoric was a crime of violence 
against every tender cell in a boy’s brain. It seemed 
to me about as useful an instrument for the cultiva- 
tion of a boy’s spirit as a pair of pliers or a crow- 
bar would be in the growing of a carnation. 

‘Why don’t you write a better text yourself?” 
Seeds asked, as he found me stuffing those dreary 
volumes into the darkest corner I could find. 

But I wanted no text at all. I wanted my boys 
to read good books, to write spontaneous letters, to 
speak straight and clear while standing on their feet. 
I thought that it was up to me as a teacher to draw 
these boys into wanting to do these things. I felt 
a desire to teach, as though teaching were an instinct 
within me irksome of bookish inhibitions. ‘This hid- 
eous printed monstrosity seemed to lie, sluggish and 


186 OH RAG ALTON BIO, 


slimy across my path. It seemed to have invaded my 
classroom like a cuckoo in the nest of a robin. It 
didn’t belong. So, too, though less poignantly, did 
college examinations seem to shove themselves into 
my way, and into the path of my pupils. I resented 
them, but I had to face them and deal with them. It 
was evident that I must compromise. My problem 
was how to compensate for such a compromise, how, 
in a measure, to teach boys to live and to learn about 
some of the very finest things in human evolution 
while at the same time cramming them for college. 
How could I make Burke interesting? How could 
I humanize Carlyle? Were the dates in Myers’ 
‘History’? memorable for more than mere figures? 
Would it be possible to squeeze one single micro- 
scopic drop of emotion from Brander Matthews? 
Could we not enjoy “Twelfth Night” without worm- 
ing our way through its notes and concordance at the 
back of our texts half as thick as the whole book? 
The genus boy is a laughing animal, not a solemn 
mole. 

Valpo McGee was one of these laughing animals. 
Reckless, rollicking, devil-may-care, fizz-water and 
dynamite lad that he was, he scoffed at ancient forms 
and classic pomp, insistent that story, poem, essay 
or play come down to earth and speak to him in his 
own language. Shakespeare, bosh! Milton, hell! 
Macaulay, devil take him and his like! Yet when 
we read “Twelfth Night” as a comedy, he settled 
back into his chair and chuckled merrily with the rest 


Caan, SR AMIC | (BO) 'Y: 187 


of us from beginning to end. We became actors and 
critics and audience in one. ‘These chaps aren’t so 
bad,” said Valpo, “once you get next to them and 
what they’re driving at. It’s the getting at it that 
makes me sore. This story is all right if you don’t 
have to think about remembering all the junk in the 
notes about words and meanings. In fact I rather 
like it.’ The approach to which he had been ac- 
customed was that of making Shakespeare an instru- 
ment of philology, an archeological hunting ground 
for mummified English words. Yet when a boy 
spontaneously questioned the meaning of a word, 
when he himself was interested in getting at a defini- 
tion, lexicography became fun. In one of the notes 
in “Twelfth Night,” for instance, cropped up the 
word eunuch. Don wanted to know what it meant. 
The remainder of our class period became a dis- 
cussion in physiology. 

I drew a rough diagram on the blackboard of our 
system of ductless glands, starting with the pineal 
and pituitary and coming down through thyroid, 
parathyroid, thymus, adrenals and gonads. A crude 
blood-vessel system in red chalk, sprinkled with im- 
mensely magnified symbols of the various hormones 
in varying colors lent me a graphic background for 
an extemporaneous lecture. 

The boys were interested in the physiology of in- 
ternal secretions, but they were still more keenly 
alive to the mental influences emanating from this 
interrelated system of chemical laboratories within 


188 NUH EW Re AL eB Oy; 


us. That one’s moods, dreams, ideas, impulses and 
emotions are related to an interior and silently mys- 
terious chemistry, seemed quite astounding. 

Capons, oxen, horses, geldings and eunuchs we 
reviewed briefly in their historical and physiological 
setting with reference to interstitial cells and as a 
background for the point of greatest interest. That 
sO many secondary sexual characters, not only phys- 
ical but mental and spiritual as well are definitely 
related to the normal functioning of a certain group 
of microscopic cells was a revelation to nearly all of 
these lads. ‘hey were not at all ignorant of ordi- 
nary sex functions. They were not prudish or re- 
ticent about them, or seemingly self-conscious in their 
discussion. Here we had struck a new theme con- 
cerned with the subtleties of their inward mechanism 
and I welcomed the chance which William Shake- 
speare gave me to share with the boys the little that 
I happened to know. 

I needed to point no moral. The missionary 
tendency within me, a family heritage, is forever 
tempting me to spoil a story, or a set of facts with 
an unnecessary appendage of morality although I 
know so well that our best morality springs unbidden 
and unconscious and indirectly from any vital truth. 
I counted it, therefore, a successful day when I let 
a story carry its message in its own way to whoever 
would receive it. 

I have never yet found in our reading a subject 
related directly to sex which, when met without any 


RoE AL eB OW 189 


undue emphasis and treated squarely as a matter of 
course like baseball or pie, did not lend itself to as 
unruffled a discussion as any other topic of interest. 
Youngsters of English VIII went with me to see a 
spectacular movie called “Intolerance.”’ ‘The lurid 
sex element seemed to shed itself from the pin- 
feathers of their dawning adolescence and their chief 
interest remained with battering-rams, crashing 
walls, beheaded men, springing catapults and pour- 
ing lead. They wrote about this movie afterwards 
for class-work. Women were almost wholly absent 
from their reporting. Frank, however, spoke of the 
woman taken in adultery, and in class he asked who 
she was, what she had done, and what Jesus had 
written about her in the sand. 

I told him and his classmates that adultery meant 
a woman’s living as a wife with a man who was not 
her husband, or a man’s living as a husband with a 
woman who was not his wife. Some Jewish men 
had found a woman guilty of this way of living and 
were going to stone her to death, according to Jew- 
ish custom. 

“But what did Jesus write in the sand?” Frank 
insisted. 

“YT don’t know,” I replied. ‘Probably nobody 
knows. He told those men that if any one of them 
had never done wrong, they might throw stones at 
the woman who had done wrong. ‘The story says 
that the men drifted away, leaving Jesus alone with 
the woman and writing in the sand with his finger. 


190 | PH ERE AL. BOY 


Someone ought to write a story or a poem about that 
writing in the sand.” 

That was all. We returned to arrows, spears 
and shields. I felt that the job was done, that the 
question had been answered to boy satisfaction and 
that I need follow it no further at that time. 

Yet the hope remained that our discussion had 
stirred feeling. I hoped that it had led some boys 
to feel what tolerance is. Again, I believe I should 
have spoiled a bit of teacherhood had I[ talked about 
tolerance. Am I wrong? Is the church right in 
telling one of those wonderful old stories, and then 
spending an hour talking about its moral applica- 
tion? I remember pondering upon this theme very 
often while at Intervale. 


III 
If a wholesome book so held a boy that I had 


to speak to him three times and then poke him in the _ 
ribs to remind him that a bell had rung and he must 
away to algebra class I believe that book was an 
instrument of real education. I had to do that once 
to Treadwell, buried deaf to the world in ‘‘Bob, Son 
of Battle.” Such books as “Green Mansions” do 
their work that way, and ‘The Aztec Treasure 
House,” ‘““The Brushwood Boy,” ‘‘Les Miserables” 
and ‘The Three Musketeers.” I have never had to 
supplement the ringing of a bell with a poke in the 
ribs when a boy was reading Macaulay, Carlyle, 


ieotd eho) HN 2A Io’ 5B © AY: Igl 


Milton, Addison or even Shakespeare. Upon these 
ancient artists a teacher must work, as he must work 
with algebra or Latin. 

Most emphatically I am not “‘agin the classics.” 
Most positively I am not in favor of mere easily 
cheerful tasks for youth. I wish them to pray not 
for “tasks equal to their powers, but for powers 
equal to their tasks.’ But it is for the teacher, as 
artist, to create cheerful, happy attitudes toward 
such tasks as are timely to youth in its several ages, 
or nodes, and into which its soul will drive with a 
thrill of joy in the effort! 

Now the creation of attitudes is a job whose tools 
are furnished by the fledgling science of psychology. 
If modern psychology has made any definite, clear- 
cut contributions to the art of teacherhood, one of 
the most important is certainly the demonstration 
that the training of children toward attitudes, or sets 
of mind, consists largely in the acquirement of condi- 
tioned reflexes. The plasticity and moldability of 
those psychic tendencies which lie far deeper than 
perceptions and ideas is an age-old fact of startlingly 
new significance in the light of a practical technique 
of approach and procedure. This is not a book on 
psychology, and so I refer anyone not already famil- 
iar with the role of the conditioned reflex in relation 
to attitudes or rudimentary philosophies of life, to 
that splendid book of William Burnham’s, “The 
Normal Mind.” That volume stands out above the 


192 PIPE REE BOY 


rank jungle of recent psychiatric writings, a tower 
of refuge in the sunlight, like Watson’s ‘‘Behavior- 
ism.” 

Take a boy’s attitude toward the classics, for in- 
stance. No one is educated, for intellectual life at 
least, who has not a working acquaintance with Mil- 
ton, Carlyle, Burke, Dante and their fellow lights of 
bygone days. The school introduces a pupil to these 
luminaries either as boresome enemies or as possible 
friends. There is also a middle course, that of ac- 
quainting our youngsters with these great ones as 
dumb-bells, Indian clubs, rings, bars and gymnasium 
ropes by which to get in trim for an event of mental 
athletics, the passing of college exams. I tackled 
Burke this way. 

After reading aloud to my class a few pompously 
circumlocuitous paragraphs from the great speech 
on conciliation, I looked up and said, quite seriously: 
‘‘Now isn’t that a splendid piece of clear-cut, graphic 
picture-writing? Don’t you fairly see the things he’s 
talking about as though they were on a movie 
screen?’ ‘To which Jobbie, with bogus seriousness 
in his eye, responded: ‘Yes, sir!” 

Abbott, however, knowing me better, spoke out 
what he thought. ‘That stuff is more like blowing 
smoke into your brain than filling it with ideas. 
Didn’t I read somewhere that the fellows in Parlia- 
ment who listened to Burke went to sleep? I’m sure 
I should now if you'd keep on reading.” 


MeSH eats ALL B GYy: 193 
“Say,” added Chamberlain, “if that stuff had been 


read to us last year, the air would have been full of 
erasers and chalk. If we thought you were serious 
you couldn’t get away with it. Why have we got to 
go through with that sort of thing?” 

I said that were it not that college entrance ex- 
aminations are devised as though to avoid testing 
one’s real grasp of a subject as a whole, and merely 
attempt to trip up memory with some stick or stone 
of isolated fact, I would make Burke simple for them 
within a half an hour. I believe that entrance exams 
are growing less vicious, if not distinctly more in- 
telligent since my Intervale days; but leafing through 
them then, I was appalled at the way they choked 
thought and strained memory for utterly irrelevant 
details. Facing the boys, I said that I would ac- 
quaint them with Burke disrobed of his cloudy elo- 
quence and in plain United States. For I believed 
in Burke and in the job he undertook. It seemed 
a shame that American boys should know Burke as 
a mere phrase factory. So, reducing his oration to 
such an approach to Bruce Barton English as I was 
able, I voiced it forth from behind my desk and 
failed, at least, to put anyone to sleep. We had the 
gist of it, and we should have been allowed to remain 
content with that. It was necessary, however, to 
tackle the thing as a gymnastic job, for these boys 
were headed toward college and must answer ques- 
tions. So I put the original text up to them as a 


194 MEL WEG RRNA BC) oY 


discipline for mental muscles, to be faced and put 
through in the spirit of the training camp. They 
gritted their teeth, dug their toes into the ground 
and we conquered that particular epic in less than a 
week of hard work. 

Karl alone stood out against my methods. Karl 
was sixteen, and a typical Teuton. Round head, 
flaxen hair, gray-blue eyes, tough muscled and hum- 
ming with energy, he was all for formal discipline, 
drill, drive, master. He said [ violated true teacher- 
hood in my tactics. Declared that college require- 
ments are products of evolution, the best tests that 
mankind has yet devised for his fellow-man’s men- 
tality. One should learn to vault them with the 
stout pole of his disciplined learning, leap over into 
college as one would clear a fence. He said that 
I was not honest in my role as a teacher, that I was 
not loyal to the ethics of my profession when I 
became a vocal pony to make Burke easy for the 
boys. His candor and frankness charmed me, and 
I breathed a prayer of thanksgiving that I was such 
a teacher as could be approached so bluntly with 
the rude truth as a lad saw it. 

“Karl,” I said, “your attitude toward Burke and 
the college exams is far different from that of these 
American boys. You have brought over with you a 
military trend of mind, a willing submission to con- 
stituted academic authority, and unquestioning belief 
in the solid rightness of established educational tra- 


Ee REAL BOY 195 


ditions. You ask me to tell you what to do, and 
then make you do it. There is a certain value in 
your set of mind. It would certainly be easier for 
me as a teacher looking forward to showing boys 
into college if they would all approach this question 
in your way. But these fellows are of a different 
breed. They doubt, they question, they demand to 
be shown. Their mental attitude is still in the mak- 
ing. It is for me not merely to give them instruc- 
tion, but to try and help them to a point of view.” 

‘You Americans,” he replied, “are wonderfully 
wasteful. ‘These boys waste time as their mothers 
and your restaurants waste bread. You waste your 
time talking to thesé chaps. Why ask them what 
they think? Why not just tell them what to do? 
You are a teacher, you ought to know what their 
attitude should be; you should merely see that they 
live up to it. ‘hey are here to learn, you to teach.”’ 

Karl had read the Bible through three times, be- 
ginning almost as soon as he could read. He had 
translated parts of it from Greek into German and 
then into English. He had been preordained for 
the ministry, with Prussian precision of forethought 
and all his schooling had been classically formal. His 
attitude was that of the old-time scholar, the scho- 
lastic; hardly that of the philosopher, and certainly 
not that of the enlightened scientist forever asking 
how and why. He liked Carlyle. 

There is no doubt that Carlyle has given us a 
masterful and sympathetic introduction to Bobbie 


196 UH BR ATS ROY: 


Burns. He has brought Mohammed out of the dis- 
tant desert and led him up to shake our hand. His 
picturesque, impressionistic splashings of color in 
celebration of the French Revolution are charming 
to a tough-minded and literary adult. But he was 
also a master at beclouding straight and simple 
thoughts in inky verbal clouds and time is too pre- 
cious a heritage of youth to be thrown away in ex- 
ploration among rhetorical nebule. We _ pass 
through this world but once. We were a group of 
human souls gathered together under the motto, ““To 
Teach Boys to Live,’’ and my own conviction was 
that the way to do so was to live right now and 
here. Part of our living must be with books. When 
a book proved, on the very actual test of reading it, 
to be little more than worm-powder, flying into our 
spiritual nostrils in choking whirlwinds and turning 
interest into gasps for breath I closed it and chose 
another. I had to trust the literary appetite of my 
pupils, their own taste and their own conviction of 
how things tasted. If Macaulay and Carlyle tasted 
bitter when served in small type, I tried to make them 
palatable by the spoken word, and in a measure 
succeeded. ‘True, my students marched into exami- 
nations and answered questions about books they 
had never actually read; but their answers hit the 
mark, hit it intelligently and with a background of 
real interest. Was my pragmatic approach and tech- 
gique unjust ? 


AGT eRe ATT B OLY, 197 


IV 


For the lesser classicists I had little patience and 
no interest in behalf of my boys. College exams 
asked, ‘“‘Who was Cynewulff; what was the chief 
characteristic of Cedmon’s writings? What do you 
remember of Mandeville’s travels?” Let the col- 
leges ladle out these things to such of our youth as 
crave erudition, who are true antiquarians at heart. 
So with the minutiz of history. In this sense I feel 
that Henry Ford is right. Why remember Ameno- 
phis III, or Tushratta, King of Mitani, or even the 
cultured Nabonidus? Let us forget them after we 
have casually read about what they did or thought. 
Let them sink into the unconscious, their story a 
mere pin-point star in the nebulous massing of galaxy 
upon galaxy of minute impressions within our mys- 
terious soul. Let us read our classics or our histories 
as Wells and Van Loon wrote theirs, for an atti- 
tude, for an orientation, for a point of view, for a 
philosophy of life. Not what we learn about the 
story of mankind, but how we feel toward the story 
we are helping make today, based on our emotional 
impressions of what men and women have thought 
and done; this, it seems to me, is what our delving 
into books is for. 


“What have we to do 
With Kaikobad the Great, or Kaikhosru? 
Let Zal and Rustum bluster as they will, 
Or Hatim call to supper—heed not you. 


198 AT Ba ROR ATS, 1B OY 


‘Whether at Naishapur or Babylon 
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run, 
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, 
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.” 


Open with me a teacher’s copy of college entrance 
questions in English. Number one: ‘‘Write a brief 
character sketch of three of the following: Jarvis 
Lorry, Duke of Burgundy, John Ridd, Isabelle 
Coyle, Mr. Burchell, Gurth, Captain Brown, Jerry 
Cruncher, Squire Cass, Mrs. Dr. Primrose, Hepzi- 
bah Pyncheon, Jeremy Stickles, Cedric, Mrs. Jami- 
son, Beatrix, Mathew Maule, Priscilla Lammeter, 
Duke of Hamilton.” Now what does a hard-mus- 
cled, agile-minded son of an American business man 
want to write about Hepzibah Pyncheon or Jeremy 
Stickles? Or even John Ridd, for that matter, the 
only dynamically appealing character in this whole 
bunch of classic heroes. ‘The boys liked ‘Lorna 
_ Doone.” Some of them read Blackmore’s story 
word for word. But all of them preferred it told in 
installments by Karl Llewellyn beside an evening fire. 
As to writing an analysis of his character, I doubt 
if more than one or two would do so except under 
compulsion of dire necessity. Is there some deep 
esoteric reason, which I, as a teacher, cannot under- 
stand, why hundreds of hours of precious time should 
be devoted to the puppets of Thackeray, Addison, 
Goldsmith, or even Dickens and Scott for the sake 
of remembering their names and mental composi- 


DHE REAL BOY 199 


tion? To read “Oliver Twist” for the fun of reading 
is enlightening. ‘To read and then to write a brief 
book review while the impression is warm is at least 
rational. But to read because the content of a book 
must be remembered against a far-off examination 
date makes unnecessary work out of something that 
should be joyous educational play. ‘There lies my 
principal objection, not to our classics, but to our 
method of approach. Even Isabelle Coyle and Mr. 
Burchell may be worth our time if taken just for 
fun! | 
If evolution is, in part, adjustment to environ- 
ment; if the telephone, the movie, the radio, the 
popular science magazines, the automobile and their 
kindred mechanisms are creating for us an environ- 
ment where, to survive, we must register a multitude 
of impressions quickly, in tabloid and concentrated 
form; then is it not the educator’s job to do in all 
departments what Wells and Van Loon have done 
for history? Such literary characters as our school 
children are still supposed to remember, amble with 
merciless slowness through thousands of pages of 
leisurely style and construction. Must the kids fol- 
low them with careful caution in order to be able to 
emit a stereotypically correct answer in imitation of 
another’s description, opinion or whim? Again let 
me say that I am all in favor of any child or youth 
devouring every word that Dickens ever wrote, or 
Thackeray, or even Addison if he genuinely thrills 
to the job and will miss his supper for it. But forced 


200 ey ke Ab Ly. B Ory 


reading is fatal to an attitude of interest, of friend- 
liness toward books, and I still believe I was right in 
proposing to my boys that they give an author the 
benefit of only a hundred pages. If he failed by 
then to engage such interest as would carry his reader 
through with enthusiasm, he had better be dropped, 
perhaps to be returned to later on. In this way I 
believe that I got more real, intensive, lastingly 
memorable reading done by my handful of wild boys 
than is usually the case with youth of their caliber 
and age. And, what is infinitely more important 
still, I helped to build a friendly attitude toward 
books. 

All the foreign boys of my teacherhood days came 
to me with attitudes, with sets of mind, toward learn- 
ing, toward books, toward school which were posi- 
tive, and usually clear. They came to me with an 
open desire to learn. They came with a conviction, 
or an illusion, that what I would teach them was 
what they wanted and needed in their lives as my 
pupils. Not so with the average American youth 
who took books, school and teacher as an unescap- 
able matter of course, if not as a temporary affliction 
to be endured. I do not think that I have ever 
_ resented or lamented the latter viewpoint, I have 
merely seen in it an indication that we have failed, 
in America, to present schooling to our boys and 
girls as a thing of immediate, joyous interest with 
an understandable purpose and promise. ‘That is 
our job in the schools of tomorrow. 


THE REAL BOY 201 


My foreign boys were receptive because they were 
full of illusions. They were almost reverent toward 
classical authority because the attitude was bred 
in their bone, as it were. They were surprised and 
even shocked at Henry Ford’s viewpoint of his- 
tory, and wondered how a man of that frame of 
mind could be so great a power in the land. These 
lads were partly of Karl’s opinion that our educa- 
tional scheme, and our college requirements and 
courses were founded upon the best elements which 
capped a long and progressive evolution. They be- 
lieved in the authority of Homer, and looked open- 
eyed upon me when I would listen to one of their 
American fellows commenting upon Greek myths, as 
Heth, for instance, when he exploded: “I can’t 
quite go this fairy-tale stuff. It gets my goat to read 
such nonsense. ‘These old guys may have believed 
all this, but what’s it got to do with us, and our edu- 
cation today?” I had recalled our text-book Odys- 
sey, with its antique style, its tediously long periods 
of description, and its slow progress of action. To 
the movie-minded boys it was a drudgery and, I 
thought, an unnecessary drudgery to plow through 
a sticky mud of words in order to get a vital human 
story. The simple, fluid story of the Odyssey in 
Bulfinch’s ‘“‘Age of Fable” was not only more read- 
able, but in every way better adapted to the mind of 
a modern boy. It gave us all the action, all the 
nomenclature necessary both for immediate enjoy- 
ment, and also for meeting almost any question that 


202 He ORY EAR OBO 


might come from the college entrance board. With 
most of the boys it chimed in cheerfully enough, but 
Heth, and Murdo, and Jobbie remained obdurate 
disciples of their hero, Henry Ford. 

Kobayashi scullioned in our kitchen and came to 
me in the evening for special instruction in syntax 
and grammatical technicalities which I had difficulty 
in refurbishing against the hour of his courteous in- 
road upon my time. He was a fine looking, well 
built, gentlemanly Jap, always superlatively apolo- 
getic of his ignorance and density of mind, always 
keenly alive and alert to every phase of knowledge 
that we might consider together. Unlike my demo- 
cratic American lads, who would pound into our 
front hall in their hobnail boots direct from the 
barn, Kobayashi would always go first to his cabin, 
after the dishes were done, change to clean linen and 
shined shoes and come to me with a dim fragrance 
of sandalwood dbout him, as though he had stepped 
from some Buddhist temple. He would bring his 
tattered dictionary, thumb-worn and finger greasy, 
resembling some of those old family Bibles of the 
days when folk really read the Holy Book. “I read 
him through and through again,” he said one eve- 
ning. “I like him better as I do of books of the 
story, pardon me, better than I do of books of the 
story. I mark every word I do not remember of 
last time, pardon me, from last time. Excuse please, 
the greasiness, I sometimes go from kitchen to my 
cabin direct to look for a word I have heard and do 


THE REAL BOY 203 


not know.” I borrowed that dictionary and showed 


it to all my classes through the day. I told them 
that here was a symptom of the kind of work which 
had put Japan so quickly into the front rank of na- 
tions in the world. 

Necker was my brightest pupil. He came from 
Canada where the schools put good English first and 
where, if this boy was a fair sample, they teach one 
how to study. Grammar, composition, literature, 
spelling and penmanship each in a separate class 
period were included in his eleven course program. 
Now, at Intervale, he must cram these subjects into 
four periods of forty minutes each per week. Yet 
despite this handicap, his method of study carried 
him not only through his task, but beyond its limits. 
He would deliberately block out the work according 
to what had to be done, stick to each separate job 
consistently until he was sure that he had mastered 
it, and then tackle the next. He went about his 
study dutifully, almost solemnly as though he were 
a ward nurse on duty. For Necker, education was 
for solid success in adult life. He looked forward 
to long pants and a roll-top desk, a stenographer 
and perhaps a chauffeur. He was ready, willing and 
even eager to pay the price. His attitude was inte- 
grated, his purpose was sure, his plan of action ad- 
justed to his desire and to his ability. Books were 
mere tools. Classics he would read as he would 
take a doctor’s prescription. He was game for any- 
thing that spelled progress toward success. 


204, THE REAL BOY 


Restrepo, too, was a joy. Fresh from the tropics 
of Colombia, he proposed to me that we learn Eng- 
lish not through a primer, but by tackling Remsen’s 
chemistry right off the bat! I translate his Spanish, 
to which it was a keen pleasure to listen: ‘Why 
not learn the meaning of the terms I am going to 
use in technical school instead of the names you teach 
children? I will soon pick up cow and dog and knife 
and fork and spoon. Is it not as easy to remember 
one new word as another? Shall we not learn the 
more difficult words in our lessons, and leave the 
easy ones for the dinner-table and the campus?” 
His proposal delighted my soul, and we started im- 
mediately with Remsen. Halley, in his laboratory, 
backed my work in English, and the boy made rapid 
progress in both. The dizzy intertwistings and in- 
terminglings of our English words confused and 
puzzled the lad at first. Why spell read (past) and 
read (present) alike? Why pronounce the i in 
written differently from the iin write? Why change 
the 1 to o in wrote? I threw up hands in despair 
at the why; but responded as well as I could to the 
how. I wondered whether, if we sent our American 
boys to Colombia, and set them up against such 
difficulties as Restrepo had to contend with among 
us, they would evince as much energy and enthusi- 
asm for study. If so, we ought to revolutionize our 
whole educational scheme and pack all our boys and 
girls off to foreign countries. They would acquire 
their formal training in less than half the time it 


Mine AL BOY 205 


takes them here. ‘The classics Restrepo read for 
‘culture, for background. His attitude was one of 
deference toward the literature of all nations or 
peoples. He approached it with a somewhat re- 
ligious zeal. A few of my boys felt this way toward 
poetry, and it was in that field I found my greatest 
joy in boys with relation to books. 


CHAPTER X 


ON THE WAY OF BOYS WITH POETRY 


It was evidently a serious mistake to tell men and 
women that poetry would improve them. Perhaps 
when this fallacy is forgotten, the mass of men will 
appreciate good poetry again. 

—JoHN McClure. 


i 


PROFESSOR HALLEY dropped in for an omelet 
and a cup of tea by Kitty’s fire one evening. Such a 
Chesterfield of manners, diction, dress! His vocabu- 
lary, his enunciation, his precise mortising of words 
into crisp sentences made me feel that, as a teacher 
of English, I was a slang-slinging corrupter of the 
verbal morality of youth. Halley was uncannily 
prim, proper and precise. Picking a copy of Bob 
Service from my shelf, he skimmed through a few 
pages, walked over to where I stood and, pointing 
with his acid-stained finger to the lines: 


“The freedom, the freshness, the farness; 
O God, how I’m stuck on it all.” 


He exclaimed: 
‘How can you possibly regard that as poetry, Mr. 
Hamilton? How can you wish your boys to become 


acquainted with an author who writes such banali- 
206 


etietor Ra ACL, ab Ory, 207 


ties? They say you have introduced them to this 
Robert Service; but to what vulgarity!” 

I took the book from his hand and, turning a few 
pages, read: 


‘“’There’s sunshine in the heart of me, 
My blood sings in the breeze; 
The mountains are a part of me, 
Ipmytellow, to theltreéscaes. 


Looking up, I saw the true nature-man sparkling 
in the professor’s gray eyes. “Is that all? Go on,” 
he said. I continued: 


“Then every star shall sing to me 
Its song of liberty, 

And every morn shall bring to me 
Its mandate to be free; 


“In every throbbing vein of me. 
I'll feel the glad earth call: 
O, body, heart and brain of me, 
Praise him who made it all!” 


‘I beg your pardon,” bowed the courtly little 
naturalist. ‘I must send for that book. One is apt 
to come to such hasty conclusions. Only one wishes 
that a man who can write like that would be careful 
what he allows to get into print.” 

We discussed poetry far into the night. This 
chronic evolutionist finally conceded to me a wisp 
of rightness in my crude genetic philosophy. I be- 
lieved that savage boyhood could he led from Sam 
McGee to The Three Voices. I believed that be- 


208 SOE RR ALL eB Ory, 


fore a lad could thrill to Kipling’s Recessional, he 
must go through some such stages of growth as 
might be represented by Gunga Din, Danny Deever, 
Mandalay, The Feet of the Young Men, Tomlinson, 
McAndrew’ s Hymn, and If. 

Just as there is every variety of response to a 
specific bit of poetry in any random group of boys; 
so does the individual response vary in accord with 
the period of development, or appreciative evolu- 
tion. Our standard school curriculum recognizes 
this, dimly. We admit that Mother Goose should 
precede The Lady of the Lake, and that Gray’s 
Elegy should come before L’Allegro or Comus. 
What our curriculum fails, as a whole, to realize is 
that: 


‘We will not acknowledge that old stars fade or 
alien planets arise 

(That the sere bush buds or the desert blooms or 
the ancient well-head dries), 

Or any new compass wherewith new men adventure 
‘neath new skies.”’ 


But I hold no brief against the curriculum so long 
as a teacher is free, as | was, to roam far afield and 
garner friendly poems for my lads wherever I willed. 
With this liberty to become acquainted with verse 
that made direct and sympathetic appeal to the mind 
and heart of boyhood before me, I could tolerate 
the discipline of reading Milton with my youngsters, 
or The Lays of Ancient Rome. 


Pr RoE AT. BOY 209 


Brown and Millender came bounding into Kitty’s 
hearth-room one evening brandishing a pair of 
cotton-tail rabbits fresh from their traps in the 
swamp. Soon the quarry was fried in bread-crumbs 
and cut into steaming segments with a long hunting 
knife. ‘Please read us about Hugh Glass and his 
rabbit,” begged Brown, so I took down Neihardt’s 
epic and read: 


“He felt the gnaw of hunger like a rage. 
And once, from dozing in a clump of sage, 

A lone jackrabbit bounded. As a flame 

Hope flared in Hugh, until the memory came 
Of him who robbed a sleeping friend and fled. 


“The rabbit paused to scan the crippled bear 

That ground its teeth as though it chewed a root. 
But when, in witless rage, Hugh drew his boot 

And hurled it with a curse, the hare loped off, 

Its critic ears turned back, as though to scoff 

At silly brutes that threw their legs away.” 


This is the stuff boy dreams are made of. Nei- 
hardt fed the soul while Kitty satisfied the hunger 
of their bodies for roast rabbit. It was a joyous 
partnership. And do any of our classic models in 
prescribed literature show cleaner rhyme or clearer 
picture? Why not Neihardt and Masefield and 
John McClure on our lists for reading today? Must 
we await their death and canonization before our 
boys may listen to their music? 

Some boys at certain periods are, of course, to- 
tally and hermetically immune to poetic appeal, or 


210 SECA Ea RELY ART BiCyay 


even to the tickle of a rhymy jingle. Such was Pa 
Comely, who came to me one day for a “piece of 
poem to quote on college exams.’’ I failed to get 
a ripple of interest in the jazziest of Kipling or the 
crassest of Service or the soupiest of Eddy Guest. 
Walt Mason failed me, and Whitcomb Riley, while 
Whitman almost passed muster because his lines 
did not rhyme. ‘I reckon I like that fellow better 
because he doesn’t twist regler sentences all up to 
make the tail words jingle and lose all the sense of 
what he’s sayin’ to yah.” We finally agreed that, 
for Pa, all poetry was equally bad and decided to 
learn some lines from Hamlet which, obviously 
enough, would be of real possible value upon exami- 
nation. Pa learned them dutifully and precisely and 
with a sense of real accomplishment. His interest 
in the memorized verbal form was genuine, his de- 
light in its mastery was apparent. Whether or not 
Pa, then a lovable old man of seventeen, ever 
reached a node in life of poetic appreciation, he had 
at least spent several hours of effort heartily and 
pleasantly on his job. 


II 


Circumstances, too, make a vast difference in a 
boy’s attitude toward verse. 

Maple sugar! I find written in my Interlaken 
diary. ‘“The trees are bleeding a drippy, translucent 
sweetness into shiny gallon cans. Lessons, thank 
God, are shelved for a while. We live in the woods, 


eb ORE AL BOW, Dit 


feed fires with brush, watch iron pots boiling, and 
sleep in blankets beside them upon beds of fallen 
leaves. 

“Last night Kit curled up beneath her poncho by 
the biggest kettle and told me to appoint watches 
until four of the morning when she would inspect 
the simmering sap. The watch-boys gathered quietly 
by the fire. Aggie, Baker, Frank and Castillo sat 
close by the chattering logs, looking upward now and 
then to watch the blue-gray wraiths of hardwood 
smoke go wandering off among the branches over-. 
head.” 

‘Say!’ whispered Frank, “this would be the time 
I could listen to a poem and not get sick of it.” 
Whereupon I pulled from my pocket one of those 
beautiful little Japan Vellum books which Thomas 
Mosher used to print in Portland. ‘‘Let’s see if you 
can,” I said, and turned to: 


‘The Bells of Youth are ringing in the gateways of 
the South: 

The bannerets of green are now unfurled: 

Spring has arisen with a laugh, a wild-rose in her 
mouth, 

And is singing, singing, singing thro’ the world.” 


Glancing at Frank’s face, I knew I could read all 
four verses, and continued. At the poem’s close I 
knew that I could read on through many pages of 
The Hour of Beauty. Never before had I tried 
reading Fiona McLeod with the boys. It would 


ud CELERY WRG Ee Aes, UB Oey; 


never do in a classroom. Bob Service, Kipling, 
Masefield and some of Neihardt are vigorous enough 
to survive that arid atmosphere; but even John 
McClure would wilt and wither there, and blow to 
dust like the powdered chalk upon our chairs and 
floor. And yet, out here by the firelight underneath 
the trees, my practical-minded young trapper, Frank, 
listened, wide-eyed and solemn, to: 


‘“Wave, wave green branches, wave me far away 

To where the forest deepens, and the hill winds, 
sleeping, stay: 

Where Peace doth fold her twilight wings, and 
through the heart of day 

‘There goes the rumor of the passing hours, grown 
faint and gray.” 


Memories of those Intervale bivouacs under the 
budding maples will be lifetime treasures to all of us, 
boys and grown-ups who made sirup and sugar to- 
gether in welcome of Spring. The poetry of wood- 
land and firelight, of starshine and moonglow, of 
rose-dawn and scarlet sundown were ours. And the 
fun of Herman. For,. like the traditional spot of 
humor on a dramatic stage, he walked among us, 
relieving tensions with a laugh. 

Herman, too, essayed the making of sugar. His 
gallon tomato-cans were scrubbed to immaculate 
brilliance. He had purchased the last word in shiny 
metal taps. His auger was sharp and oiled. His 
enthusiasm was wondrous to behold. But he worked 
alone instead of with the gang, and he was not a 


ett eR A Dy Ss Oe 213 


dendrologist. His acquaintance with metals was 
wide and deep, but for wood he had scant use. That 
was for carpenters and lumbermen. A tree was to 
Herman atree. So, while good fortune led him at 
times to tap a sugar-maple, the law of chance di- 
rected his ignorance toward a variety of oak, beech, 
hickory and chestnut. If the boys had exercised a 
modicum of self-control, the poor man would have 
tried to boil his medley of conflicting saps into a 
rare new sirup. Ihe youngsters laughed too soon, 
however, and chagrin and disappointment ended a 
springtime experiment for this really deserving soul 
before its proper time. 

Of my poetry by firelight, Herman was tolerantly 
skeptical. “What for so much words? Words! 
Words! Let us do more things with our hands, and 
not so many with our tongues. A boy he needs to 
make things, not so much hear things. The poetry is 
for when one is old and must sit by his fire to keep 
warm.” 

Which reminded me of a little talk to my class- 
room boys by T. C. O’Donnell, editor of ‘‘Outing,” 
who blew in one day with a breath of the wonderful 
Dune country about him, and told us to read with 
an eye to old age. 

“I’m building a book-shelf for old age,” he said. 
“Things that I’ll want to read over again, things 
that never grow stale, but, like Benedictine, or 
Chartreuse, or Madeira, grow cheerier and mellower 
with time.” He did not ask the boys if they knew 


214. AE Re ART 3B Oye 


what those good wines were; but skipped right along. 
‘Joseph Conrad goes on that shelf, a volume at a 
time. (I never buy a complete set of an author’s 
works.) Conrad is monstrously different from most 
men who are writing today. Real men, real stuff 
there, boys; no movie wind-ups in flowers and kisses. 
You can’t forget his men and women. You'll want 
to meet them again, years after your first acquain- 
tance. And fairies? Don’t you believe in fairies? 
Too bad. They are very real to me, in books. Dun- 
sany’s ‘‘Book of Wonder”’ is on my shelf, and all his 
fairy-lore will be. What's the difference if there 
are no fairies outside of books? ‘There certainly 
are fairies between the covers, marvelous beings such 
as never could live in the everyday world outside. 
And poetry! Mr. Hamilton tells me you like Nei- 
hardt, and some of John McClure, Vachel Lindsay 
and Robert Frost. ‘There’s lots more. Find your 
favorites. Buy them. Put them on your. shelf for 
keeps. Read them every year or so. Make friends 
with them over a long acquaintance. ‘They’ll stand 
by you later on. It’s hard for us youngsters to think 
of growing old, but we all will, if we live. A shelf 
of good books is a spiritual insurance policy. It 
will pay you in the coin that moth and rust do not 
corrupt, and which burglars can’t break in and steal.” 


III 


“T like poetry when it is written in the modern 
language I can understand,’ wrote Agpawan, the 


hier AT BON 215 


primitive. ‘When it speaks of the beautiful, sweet 
and wonderful things such as river, rock, sky, love 
and others, that also gives me amusement and con- 
solation to my soul. But Chaucer’s poem I do not 
like. Nor Mr. Milton. They are very old lan- 
guage. I would be very far behind if I try learn 
what they mean. Others would pass me by in at- 
taining advantages of life while I learn.” 

I wondered if this were symptomatic of an in- 
sidious attack of Americanitis; if Aggie were be- 
ginning to feel our feverish competitive push of 
things. I trusted it was a simple, boylike reaction 
to what fits a boy’s ken; a liking for what goes 
right to the heart without too long a circuit through 
the head. That is what boys want from a book, 
or a poem: appeal direct to the feeling-self, to the 
imagination, to the emotional-motor centers, if you 
please. ‘That is what they liked about Tolstoi’s 
‘Confessions,’ a rather tedious book to me, but 
one that spoke to the latter years of adolescence 
with a straight hit. 

_“That man talks plain. You can understand him 
without trying to. He calls a spade a spade and 
a shovel a shovel. I don’t mind him even if he 
is a classic.””’ Thus Abbott, on Tolstoi in our class- 
room. ‘The word classic carried a foggy and sepul- 
chral atmosphere, seemingly inherited as a tradition 
from class to class far back into school history. 
From the upper regions the palpable enmity would 
filter to the lower strata of younger boys and load 


216 CEB Rete ANT. Bi Oy: 


a book, however intrinsically readable, with an in- 
cubus which must be over-ridden before that book 
could find a real acceptance and welcome. 

This traditional antipathy was not a little due to 
the sheer physical make-up of our prescribed read- 
ing. School texts are ugly things in black and white 
and dismal brown and gray. Ours were at least, 
and even such a treasure as “Lorna Doone’’ was 
housed as drably as the most accursed of typo- 
graphical crimes, ‘“The Mother Language,” which, 
when Wayne kicked it across the study-hall floor, 
received exactly the treatment it deserved at the 
heel of indignant youth. As a lover of books I 
therefore took it upon myself as a pleasant privilege 
to introduce the boys to printed words in settings 
somewhat fitted to their value. ‘This took all the 
courage I could muster, and every ounce of trust I 
had in the boys. For I was very jealous of the 
books upon my shelves, and despite the dim echoes 
of that philosophically enlightening shipwreck, which 
gave me such a new perspective on the relative 
values of mere things, I cherished my new library 
most fondly. It is with real joy that I can here 
set down as true, mirabile dictu though it seem, 
that I carry not a single regret over sharing those 
choice volumes of mine with two or three score 
wild youngsters over four or five years of time. 
Of course I preached a small sermon over every 
book I lent, sending it forth from my den with a 
benediction and welcoming it back as though with a 


TE REAL BOY 217 


prayer of true thanksgiving; but the boys caught 
my feeling for books, and I was as glad that they 
absorbed something of my attitude toward the ma- 
terial thing even as I was happy when they really 
enjoyed its soul. 

“‘T like this book you lent me,” said George Perry, 
bringing it back to me wrapped neatly in a fitted 
cover of brown paper (material interest on the 
loan)! “Kind of fairy-story and philosophy, isn’t 
it? Sort of poetic. Queer thing. I couldn’t un- 
derstand parts of it. Got it, though, when she 
called her husband a lob-eared, crock-kneed, fat- 
eye. Funny that a teacher should lend a guy a book 
about a girl who goes and lives naked in a cave with 
a man, even if the man was a sort of curious god.” 

“George,” I answered, “I had forgotten about 
Caitilin’s living in the cave without any clothes on; 
but I should have lent you the book just the same 
even if I had remembered her nakedness. Cer- 
tainly I don’t believe any harm could come to you 
from reading such a happy story.” 

“It was darn decent. Not like magazine stories. 
They let you imagine things too much. Have you 
any more books like this?” 

There was not another book like ‘“The Crock of 
Gold” in my collection, or elsewhere, I guess. My 
copy had gone through many lendings. Its mar- 
gins were annotated by at least a dozen hands. 
Chapters or paragraphs were marked with the 


218 ELE, REAL BO ay) 


initial or symbol of him or her who had particularly 
liked them. One practical materialist had scribbled: 
‘Not rational according to human laws’ alongside 
the paragraph containing: “The Thin Woman 
hated her own child, but she loved the Gray 
Woman’s baby, and the Gray Woman loved the 
Thin Woman’s infant but could not abide her own.” 
The mind of adolescence is an eternal treat. On the 
margins of my books its symptoms are sprinkled in 
many a comic solemnity. 


IV 


It seemed a part of my religion to refrain from 
attempting any prosaic definition of poetry to my 
pupils. Sometimes our texts cried out for analysis, 
dissection, veritable vivisection of the word. AIl- 
ways I retired into mystical aloofness, or retreated 
into a purely poetic definition. 


‘Poetry, the hand that wrings, 
Bruised albeit at the strings, 
Music from the soul of things.” 


seemed to me a clearer statement of fact than any 
of those intellectually tickling expositions which 
one finds in Brander Matthews, Max Eastman, 
Hudson. Maxim, Lafcadio Hearn, or even John 
McClure, who puts it thus: ‘Poetry as a form of 
utterance distinct from prose is simply music in 
words—an attempt to create beauty in rhythm and 
tone. Its sole distinguishing characteristic is its 


Ee RATT BIG) TY: 219 


harmonization of syllables and rhythm. There is 
no such thing as a poetic idea.” I have always pre- 
ferred to rejoice under the delusion of the poetic 
idea, and to believe that Mr. McClure most ex- 
quisitely contradicts himself when he says (and this 
is the kind of definition I like to give a boy or girl) : 


‘Poetry? 

The voice that leaps up 

With the Springing Water 

And thunders out of the mountain.”’ 


A final, prosy definition of poetry such as would 
rejoice the hearts of those who concoct entrance 
exams for college, always makes me think of Her- 
bert Spencer’s conception of life as “‘a definite com- 
bination of heterogeneous changes, both simultane- 
ous and successive, in correspondence with external 
co-existences and sequences.”’ And my feeling, upon 
reading such a definition of life, is best expressed 
in the poetry of Fiona McLeod: 


‘For having found, I know 
I shall have clasped a wandering wind 
And built a house of snow.”’ 


If pressed too hard for precision of statement, I 
could quote such a charmingly clouded generality as: 
‘Poetry is an advance beyond prose as painting is 
an advance beyond hieroglyphics, and as music is 
an advance beyond poetry.”’ For often did my hard- 
headed lads insist on knowing why folk committed 


220 The aR AL (BOY 


words to verse. We tried to practice doggerel or 
jingle to get a touch, perhaps, of the poet’s feel- 
ing for musical wording. Very few boys, however, 
got further than the pleasure which Arthur Guiter- 
man must enjoy when he writes about “‘silver salt- 
shakers at John Wanamaker’s.” Something of the 
mystery lying behind mere transposition of words 
so that their syllables approach music (as in 
McClure’s illustration of “beautiful exceedingly” as 
contrasted to ‘“‘exceedingly beautiful’) reached Ag- 
pawan, who brought me one day a vers libre to his 
friend Wayang: 


“O thee I love 
Longing to see thee, 
When thee wast come 
Send me a word 
So I shall meet thee 
And shake hands 
With a dance.”’ 


This, I believe, was true poetic expression from 
the brown lad’s primitive soul. Dole, on the other 
hand, who consciously willed to become a writer of 
verse for the moral elevation of mankind, oozed 
forth such saccharine dribble that I hesitated to en- 
courage his efforts. His pencil must have stuck 
to the paper on which he wrote. Such treacle would 
have meshed the keys of a typewriter inextricably. 
His effusions seemed indicative of a rubber spine, 
and indeed he was one of the most docile, para- 


Lalit AY BOY, 221 


sitical and soft-shelled kids who ever slid, jelly- 
like across my trail. He was the type which makes 
poetry cloysomely effeminate to our adolescent cave- 
men of high-school age. 

With Dole on the one hand, and Pa Comely on 
the other, I strove to introduce my boys to true 
poetry, without letting them know that I was strug- 
gling at all. I believe that it was because I de- 
liberately awaited the inward hint or hunch that the 
time and circumstance were ripe for verse that our 
sessions by candle-light, or emberglow within doors, 
and by our laughing little fires in the woods, or 
out among those wondrous dunes of Lake Michigan, 
proved so memorably happy. I have even brought 
candles into our classroom, hauled down the shades, 
drawn chairs into a friendly circle and read poetry 
when it seemed the momentary thing to do. Per- 
haps, as my boys have sometimes insisted, I am a 
nut on the handling of poetry; but place, surround- 
ings, atmosphere seem to me such powerful factors 
(perhaps conditioning reflexes!) in one’s introduc- 
tion to such an elusive and delicate art, that I have 
chosen rather to err in their favor than against their 
subtle influence. 

There was occasional parental objection to Whit- 
man, whom the boys cared little for, on the whole, 
and Masefield, whom the boys followed as though 
he were a football captain or a champion of the 
ring.. Masefield said damn instead of darn, and 
spoke of whores when he meant them (like Kip- 


222 Uy Ae ORAL ae B On. 


ling, or the Holy Bible), instead of hedging into 
some soothing euphemism. The Everlasting Mercy 
made many converts for me, not to Masefield alone, 
but to poetry as a fine and virile art. A man who 
could write in musical meter about a bloody prize- 
fight so magnetically, could also win a boy’s feeling 
for such lines as almost antiphonally followed a 
crude realism, as for instance: 


“Fach one could be a Jesus mild, 
Each one has been a little child, 
A little child, with laughing look, 
A lovely, white unwritten book; 
A book that God will take, my friend, 


As each goes out at journey’s end.” 


My old friend Stockbridge, from Mexico, dropped 
in upon us at Intervale one day. He brought me 
a copy of “Leaves of Grass.” He would convert 
the world to Whitman. Ignatius Loyola would have 
faded into dim insignificance as compared to Bob in 
point of missionary eloquence and zeal. The boys, 
however electrified by Bob’s personal, magnetic 
charm, yet failed to transfer their interest to Whit- 
man, save only, perhaps, in Captain, My Captain, 
which “had a certain swing.’’ After this explosive 
visit of my energetic friend, Whitman remained on 
its shelf and I trusted the boys would some day 
grow to appreciative dimensions; but I saw they 
could not be forced. Well I remembered Bob, full- 


flushed of ebullient adolescence, upbraiding me for 


pig RATS. OBO): 223 


my acquaintance with Oscar Wilde. That was in the 
days when his poetic horizon was bounded by the 
“Kasidah,” the “Rubatyat,”’ and the ‘Songs of 
Kabir.”” He seized my poor little copy of ‘The 
Happy Prince,” and, glancing through in his rapidly 
absorptive way, growled out: “Shame on you for 
wasting time on such stuff! A love-sick fool weep- 
ing for a red-rose, an impossible nightingale sing- 
ing herself to death for him and his stupid girl! 
And this Wilde, a degenerate poseur anyhow. 
Shame on your taste, I say!’ Times had changed, 
and my friend would have remembered that occa- 
sion with perhaps an incredulous smile had I brought 
it to mind. Each of us has his own rate of progress, 
his own determined nodes of response, and we 
teachers must simply be patient, experiment géntly 
and, when the budding moment comes, be ready with 
whatever our hunch, our intuition, tells us is the 
thing the kid then needs, wants, and hungers for. 

To what end, for what purpose did I strive to 
acquaint young savages with poetry, going far out 
of my appointed way asa teacher to do so? Simply 
and wholly because I was happy in the thought 
that a few of these boys might then, or later, get 
some of the deep enjoyment which had come to me 
from my friendship with the poets, old and new. 
Had I felt forced to administer poetry only in aca- 
demic doses for ulterior purposes of college, or of 
graduation, I should have presented to my classes, 


224 THE REAL BOY 


for a memory exercise, that little Arbor-Day gem 
of Ambrose Bierce’s: 


‘“‘Hlasten, children, black and white, 
Celebrate the yearly rite. 
Every pupil plant a tree; 
It will grow some day to be 
Big and strong enough to bear 
A School Director hanging there.” 


How far did I succeed? I do not know. I have 
never sent out mimeographed questionnaires to my 
pupils. A few pictures of memory remain very vivid 
and very sweet to me, however, and from them | 
conclude that my efforts were not all in vain. I 
might set down just one of these. 

In the wonderful Duneland of northern Indiana, 
immortalized already by the deft etchings of Earl 
Reed, my boys camped in the summer-time, living, 
naked and brown, a life almost wholly their own. 
Some of us oldsters hung about the fringes of boy- 
life, occasionally taking an awkward, adult part 
in its work and play. I used to sit at the top of the 
tallest dune and look down, as it were, on the royal 
domain of boyland, a community apparently all suf- 
ficient unto itself. 

One evening the moon climbed up slowly behind 
me among the cedar and tamarack, flooding the roll- 
ing waste of sand below with sufficient creamy light 
to reveal two score little pup-tents circling around 
the big black fireplace where waffles and pancakes 


WHER AL BOY 225 


were born every morning, and where ‘‘dogs’’ and 
marshmallows roasted at night. Thirteen little 
good-night fires still flickered in the lake-breeze. 
Off in a bunch of poplar a red glow rose and fell 
among the branches. The lazy swash of easy surf 
upon the shore built a rhythmic background for 
wisps of song and the notes of a piccolo that floated 
up to me from somewhere among the crouchy little 
bushes and long tasseled grasses of the nearer dune- 
side. 

The boys were sleeping soundly, for they were - 
wholesomely tired. Running naked all day in the 
sun (bodies baked and all immune to blisters now), 
chasing snakes, catching turtles, spearing bullfrogs 
in the marshland behind the wall of hills; fighting 
in trenches and over the burning sand; plunging 
into the lake whenever the council permitted, and 
hauling driftwood over long distances for supper 
and evening fires, their lot was one upon which 
sound sleep followed fast and hard. Forty ma- 
hogany imps, eyes aglow to the magic of the camp- 
fire story half an hour before were now immovable 
logs, paired off under brown canvas beneath the eye 
of the moon. 

From the dune-top I slid down and wandered 
toward the shadowy grove of poplars where fire- 
light still rose and fell, uttering the sweet smell of 
driftwood mixed with green. Six of our older lads, 
the Junior Councilors, lay like spokes about a hub 
of crackling branches, while Castillo, his back against 


226 SE BN EDs Boa O ENG 


a ghostly poplar, read to them in picturesque 
Castilian-English: 


‘Here by the perc s flicker 
Deep in my blanket curled 
I long for the peace of the pine-gloom 
When the scroll of the Lord is unfurled 
When the wind and the wave are silent 
And world is singing to world.” 


Was there not enough compensation in what I 
saw and heard to cheerfully justify a teacher’s some- 
times struggling endeavors to make poetry not a 
task, or a discipline, or a duty, but a joy? 


CHAPTER XI 


HOW A TEACHER IS HELPED BY A WIFE 


Thus we are put in training for a love which knows 
not sex, or person, nor partiality, but which seeketh 
virtue and wisdom everywhere. 

—EMERSON. 


I 


THE boys of English II asked for a vacation from 
all composition for a week, and requested that I 
write for them instead. Lorenzo gravely wrote 
upon our blackboard the topic for my theme: 


“My Courtship and Marriage’”’ 


“And you tell the truth now!” he said. “We've 
read about Miles Standish and Enoch Arden and 
Lorna Doone, and a lot of love stories out of books. 
Now you get down to date. Make it snappy and 
tell the truth.” 

I promised to tell the truth and nothing but the 
truth, but could not agree to tell the whole truth. 
I told the boys how I had once written a letter 
about married life to a friend, and suddenly found 
myself flat upon my back gasping for breath upon 
the floor. Kitty had glanced over my shoulder as 


227 


228 yee Tl) ART ACI BOY 


I wrote, and that letter became but a scattering of 
fragments which I afterward gathered up with a 
broom. To be sure she had planted a forgiving 
kiss upon my forehead later, ruffed my hair and 
smiled most radiantly at her tempestuous onslaught; 
but she also threatened assault and battery when- 
ever I might wax too minute in descriptions of her 
domestic domain. The boys swore secrecy, however, 
and I was commanded to write with all the fearless 
freedom which I preached to them anent their com- 
positions. It was a fair challenge, and I accepted 
it. 

In the first installment I resorted to crass subter- 
fuge instead of labor. Burrowing into a bunch of 
old letters, I found a long description of: night 
sounds and sights in the Maine woods, redolent 
with effusive attempts at literary style. This I 
copied down, and presented it to the expectant boys 
as symptomatic of the influence of love upon one’s 
creative talent. After listening with courteous pa- 
tience to such banal verbiage, Lorenzo piped up 
with: 

“Say, that’s worse than the classics! Did you 
copy it from a book? Might as well read to us from 
Macaulay or somebody. We want a story, a real 
story. You’re slacking on the job. We didn’t ask 
you to write about trees and birds and lakes and 
the moon, but about yourself and Kitty!” 

Lorenzo was dead right. I had slipped into peda- 
gogy, dodging the issue. I had the temerity to 


Apes Bolan. B cy) 229 


think that I was going to teach a lesson in English 
Composition! I retreated into a defense mechanism 
which merely exhibited an all too common cowardice 
in the face of a concrete issue. Have we not here 
one of the standard fallacies of school education? 
The side-stepping of the immediate and personal; 
the delving into the past; the attempt at illumina- 
tion from outside authority; the withdrawal into 
books, symbols and sublimations? Against it youth 
rebels. It asks for the bread of romance, and we 
hand it the stone of a platitude. 

But these boys wanted more than fun, more than 
mere romance. Conversations with some of them 
after class showed me that they looked forward 
to something of the background in courtship and 
marriage of two people who seemed to live happily 
together. For Kitty and I lived not merely a con- 
ventionally cheerful and routinely contented life in 
those days, but one of ebullient frolic and laughter, 
of sham-battle, strenuous but good-natured rivalry 
and contention with each for his or her own sphere 
of rights. I believe that we were fun for the boys. 
Our hearthside was a haven of refuge for many a lad 
who drifted there out of his loneliness like a moth 
to a lighted window. It was home to them, and 
friendship and inward cheer on homesick days and 
gloomy hours. 

To many married folk come causes of belligerence 
unstudied and unstaged. Kitty and I planned our 
scraps with all the deliberation of a Napoleonic 


230 THE VR EAL BOY 


battle. One morning war was declared swiftly. 
She kicked me out of bed, suddenly and without 
warning. I rattled noisily to the floor, bringing 
Bunny downstairs with reprimand and threat. I 
swore vengeance and registered scorn for our neigh- 
bor upstairs. 

Later, when Kit made the bed, I threw a small, 
willowy rocking chair in her direction. It came 
spinning back toward me very straight. I dodged. 
It bounced upon our woven rug, knocked the black 
frying pan from its hook on the hearthside wall 
onto a glass pitcher, broke a cup and two plates, 
and stood rocking dizzily in the middle of the room 
when Seeds stepped in to ask with a surprised smile 
what might be going on. Much later still I heard 
that one of the boys had heard that Mrs. Brough 
had heard that Mrs. Seeds had heard that the 
Hamiltons carried their marital squabbles to the 
point of physical violence and actually threw furni- 
ture at each other! I knew, however, that when 
such gossip trickled as far out as the boys, it was 
welcomed with a smile of understanding. 

I wrote about that incident to a friend. She failed 
to read a touch of humor between the lines, and 
came from Chicago, post-haste with heart-balm for 
our domestic casualties! I found her in rapt con- 
versation with Kitty, fires of battle in the latter’s 
eyes and, sensing danger, I moved toward my study 
door. Kitty blocked the way. ‘What have you 
been writing to Hazel, you wretch?” But I slipped 


loin ATG) B Oty 231 


greasily around her and locked myself within my 
den. The boys had this story, too, before supper- 
time. It was too good for Kit to keep and I was 
greeted in the dining-room with rollicking laughter 
and much clatter of knives and forks against glasses 
and plates. 

Again, a snow-bath brought me rather comic pub- 
licity at Kitty’s hands when I failed to follow her 
injunction to go forth into such pastimes properly 
Glad inkas bathrobe.) 1vhad’ joineda) half dozen .of 
the hardier lads in one of our frequent night-battles, 
naked and unashamed among the snow-drifts. We 
pelted each other with gobs and balls of snow, 
chased one another, tripping, slapping, tackling and 
mauling until we were as warm as breakfast rolls 
and our skins seemed to sing like the morning stars 
for joy that they were made. Returning full speed 
from camp, hungry for the glow of our fireside, | 
found door and windows locked and fancied some- 
one peeping at me through the curtains with a most 
mischievous smile. I knocked and rattled and 
pushed in vain, begging for mercy; but, like the 
penitent emperor who waited barefoot on the 
threshold of a pope, I seemed condemned to stand 
or hop in the frosty air until morning. Finally, risk- 
ing discovery, I slipped through the back hall of our 
building and into my fireless study where I was kept 
prisoner until I promised faithfully never to go snow- 
bathing again with only a towel for apparel. 

Small wonder that boys, wise to such stories as 


232 Or Ee RV AaB Gy 


these, wanted more, and demanded them when it 
was my turn to write, instead of read and correct, 
a composition. 


II 


My wife sat by the window one morning sorrow- 
fully ripping up a pair of blue bloomers. Pious 
gossip of the petticoated sovereignty of community 
women had irked on her nerves too long. It had 
begun when, that fall, Kit had played tennis with 
the boys in her bathing suit after a swim in the 
lake. Swimming, skating, snowshoeing, basket-ball, 
tennis and long camping and canoeing trips had 
given her gracefully powerful legs, enviable legs per- 
haps to those who grew so suddenly conscientious 
about proprieties. She had compromised with so- 
ciety by appearing in bloomers and middy after a 
committee of faculty wives had presented their plea 
for conventions to our principal. Bloomers, while 
rather ugly in themselves, had at least left her with 
a freedom of action not to be found in skirts. But 
her athletic calves remained too undignified in the 
eyes of those who had our moral welfare at heart, 
and again she submitted to established tradition, 
donning plaid skirts, too long for comfort but still 
too short for complete conformity to local standards 
of decorum. Romulo found her at the work of 
sartorial revision and exclaimed: “It’s a shame! 
That will make you grow old inside as well as out. 


OTs b nis LANL AaB Oy: 233 


I shall feel as though I were coming to visit a 
member of the faculty instead of a friend. Why 
do you have to do it ?” 

Kitty answered in a way that rescued her sister 
members of the faculty from all blame for her 
course; but also in a way which might have horri- 
fied some of them had they listened at our door to 
the conversation which followed between woman and 
boy. Pointing to a pair of baby booties that lay on 
the table, she remarked: ‘“Aren’t those pretty?” 

‘For you?” asked Romulo. Kit nodded. ‘Good! 
I'll be glad when there are a lot of little Romulos 
running about in my own home. Isn’t it fine that 
acquired characters aren’t handed on by heredity? 
My deafness came from scarlet fever and is not the 
hereditary kind. I can be married, my doctor says, 
without being afraid for my children.” 

Romulo was partially deaf, but the good Lord 
had compensated him richly in acute powers of ob- 
servation, concentration and sympathy. He read 
with uncanny understanding, won all our observa- 
tion contests, applied himself with fruitful resolu- 
tion to all tasks and responded to suggestion with 
an enthusiasm lamentably lacking among most of 
his fellows. His naiveté was exquisite and his frank- 
ness and spontaneity were lovely to behold. He 
dropped in often to read Emerson aloud to Kitty 
while she sewed or knitted. The essay on Compen- 
sation was his favorite. “It hits me where I live,” 
he would say. 


234. “DOP ras thes BO sy" 


It was not my wife’s waffles and cocoa alone that 
brought boys to her somewhat primitive home by the 
fireplace. They came with such half baked dreams 
as a boy often longs to talk over with his mother 
or an older sister. Kitty was a good listener, and 
while she must have smiled inside very often while 
she listened to the solemnities of adolescence, her 
ready sympathy was always tonic to the boys. 

One day I found McGee sharing roast chicken, 
sweet potatoes, fruit salad and real coffee with 
Chambers and Murdo by our fire. Standing in the 
doorway’s shadow, I caught this fragment of phi- 
losophy before I was discovered and invited in: 
‘““That’s the hell about this war business (pardon 
me, Kitty). Just get wanting to do something aw- 
ful bad, and then you’ve got to go off for two or 
three years in the army. It’s like a play. Not 
that I don’t want to go; but I want to go at the 
wrong time. I could lay off the coming back with 
hero medals if I could hurry up the time I could 
get married and settle down.” Now no one could 
picture McGee settled down. He was the most un- 
settled and unsettling boy in our community. I 
asked Kit how she had come to let him in beside 
the fre again. I had thought him dropped from her 
list and quite completely anathema. 

“Well,” she said, ‘‘he’s been home and come back 
quite changed. Of course this engagement will not 
last; but it really has settled him down a bit, and he 
came to me this afternoon asking me to help him 


DHE REAL iBOY 235 


stop smoking, so he shall have another chance. 
Good kid, at that.” 

Some of the boys who wished to stop, or cut down 
smoking brought their tobacco or cigarettes to Kitty, 
promising not to smoke unless they came to her for 
materials. She would not allow them to smoke in 
her home, and she made them put up a stiff fight 
for their own tobacco before she would let them 
have it to take off behind the power-house where 
most of the clandestine smoking was done. Dome 
and Van, indeed, had built themselves an elaborate 
smoking parlor in the swamp at some distance from ~ 
the Fatima Trail as the boys called the path from 
the power-house into the woods. They had fur- 
nished it with a table and some chairs for the en- 
~ tertainment of a few of the elect at poker, tobacco 
and occasional bottled beer from town. The den 
was raided, by Seeds at last, with consequent pub- 
licity which resulted in the multiplication of such 
hiding-places here and there throughout our wood- 
land. 

While I believed Kitty’s method was helpful to 
those boys who wanted to go slow in the use of 
the epic weed, my own attitude was that the morality 
of smoking belonged in the domain of the athletic 
coach. Here is strictly a physiological matter which 
every boy can clearly understand. A word from the 
basket-ball coach should be sufficient. If that does 
not work, hardly any other method will. The ful- 
minations of anti-cigarette leaguers from our school 


236 REA TB: Oy, 


platform, the lectures and threats of our principal 
and even the “Little White Slaver” campaign staged 
by Thomas Edison and Henry Ford seemed to have 
about as much practical effect upon smoking among 
our boys as the prohibition amendment has had upon 
drinking beer at Yale. 

‘Mrs. Seeds said that Seeds doesn’t smoke be- 
cause it might hurt his brain.” I heard Birney re- 
mark one day. ‘If it hurts one’s brain, then Seeds 
ought to be the last bird on earth to be afraid of 
it.” Thus the comeback of a boy. 

One day I found a group of boys in solemn con- 
clave with Kitty. Bushie’s pipe had been stolen. The 
upper stratum of the boys was convulsed with emo- 
tion, for that tooth-worn, blackened briar with its 
marvelous incrustation of highly enviable ‘“‘cake” had 
become a household character in West Hall. Its 
loss was a group tragedy as well as a deep grievance 
for its distracted owner. It was a short, squatty, 
bulldog pipe with cloudy amber stem and a thin gold 
band. It was sweet as honey in the honeycomb, and 
always sheathed reverently in gray buckskin. A 
covetable pipe indeed, a temptation of the devil, and 
as seductive an item as ever led to the breaking of 
two commandments. Woe to the culprit if he were 
found! For one cannot steal a pipe like that as 
one would borrow a shirt, or a tie, or a sweater in 
a time of pinch. A pipe is a very primitively per- 
sonal belonging to a boy, a thing of pride, like a 
knife, or a gun, or a fishing-rod or a set of traps. 


THe UREA BOY 237 


The mental roots of such possessive feelings may 
run back, as Doctor Hall would say, to our fore- 
bears who guarded hearth-fires with their blood 
and lives. For the pipe is a diminutive and portable 
hearth, a miniature camp-fire, carried with us per- 
haps as a reminder of days when life was vital 
with grim realities. Bushie’s pipe had become al- 
most as lovable as Treadwell’s dog, and I do not 
wonder the boy looked as though he had lost a dog 
or a friend. ‘The boys suspected confiscation, and 
I saw thunderclouds gathering above Krupp’s head. 

Kitty came to his rescue, however, with a policy © 
of watchful waiting which was rewarded, within 
a few days, by the mysterious return of the pipe 
to its owner. ‘The electric tension of group-at- 
mosphere had been evidently too much for some- 
one to bear. We seem to live in the days of Poe or 
Sherlock Holmes! 

My wife was indulgent toward me, and allowed 
me an occasional lapse into vice. On Sunday morn- 
ing I might forego breakfast, sleep monstrously late 
and smoke one cigarette in a bathtub of hot water 
while I read Kipling. Why Kipling in a hot bath, 
I do not know, but it had become a habit. Accus- 
tomed as I was to cold showers and snow-baths, 
the degenerate luxury of a steaming tub seemed 
wickedly welcome, and a cigarette after a week of 
evening pipes was romantic. Once, only once, I 
sank still lower in the scale of human evil. Bunny 
knocked on the bathroom door and came in with 


238 gE NUD td Dp ws ot ORY 6 


a great mug of hot toddy, the mischief of malice in 
his eye. Lemoned and sugared to the taste of an 
English squire, that beverage went to my heart and 
then to my head. Bunny read to me from Kipling 
as I sipped slowly, in sublime comfort. ‘You may 
talk of gin and beer . .. but when it comes to 
slaughter ("a twisty piecevof rag’) 7) eaeanaene 
friend’s voice seemed to trail off into the humming 
of bees among apple-blossoms, the buzz of a saw- 
mill, the rush of tumbling waters over angry rocks. 
Well it was that Bunny stayed and saved me from 
a watery and alcoholic death. ‘That ought to be 
a lesson to you, young man,” he said afterwards, 
“in the physiological limits of the human body when 
subjected to external and internal heat.” Some- 
how the boys never heard this story. Perhaps it was 
because Kitty did not hear it, either! 

I was driven, at times, as though by the force of 
repressed mischief within me, to play at being a boy 
again among the youngsters who surrounded me. 
Sometimes this amounted to an infraction of those 
supposedly necessary differentiations between ma- 
turity and youth, and led to temporary tensions be. 
tween me and my colleagues of the faculty. 

Kitty made cream-tomato soup one day for 
Barney and Van, who were incarcerated in the 
faculty-house with German measles. I coveted that 
soup, for I was well acquainted with its taste. The 
boys refused to share it with me, saying that Kit 
would make me some downstairs if I wanted it and 


THE REAL BOY 239 


were as hungry as were they. I insisted, however, 
and was about to help myself when Polixander and 
Marco responded to cries for help from the invalids, 
and I was suddenly enveloped in a mattress, tied 
securely and dragged downstairs to my own quar- 
ters. Freeing myself, and finding the door of our 
temporary hospital locked tight, I ran outside and 
deliberately threw snowballs in at the window, one 
of them at least falling into the chafing-dish of 
cooling soup. Later, writing at my desk with an 
eye and ear cocked for reprisals, I heard strange 
sounds underneath the floor. Then I saw a crowd 
of boys outside peering in at me. I smiled and 
continued my work. ‘They remained, as though 
awaiting some expected phenomenon. Presently 
Senor Elie stormed downstairs from his room above 
me in cyclonic vociferousness. I stepped into the 
hall to ask him what was up. He passed me, fire- 
eyed and clenched of fist, rushing up the cinder- 
path to Seeds’ private office. On the air I smelled 
a taint of chlorine gas, obnoxiously pungent. The 
boys outside had vanished. Underneath my room 
I found a can of some concoction from Halley’s 
laboratory, smoking dismally. ‘The fumes, rather 
than penetrating the floor above had seeped through 
the walls and dislodged poor Elie from his quar- 
ters instead of punishing my culpable self. The 
philippic which he delivered to Seeds about the re- 
lation of pupil to teacher and teacher to pupil must 
have been a classic of eloquence, if I might judge 


240 MEE RoR AT | B.OvY 


from Poli’s version thereof, as heard through the 
office walls. 

Now I do not think I shall be accused of advo. 
cating the technique of the Katzenjammer Kids as 
an adjunct to our school curriculum with boys; but 
I do think, as I look back over some of these in- 
cidents at Intervale, that there should be a great 
deal more fun between adults and children, pupil 
and teacher, than I have found thus far. It does 
seem to me that we grown-ups forget how to play. 
We grow afraid that fun will interfere with our 
processional of dignity through life. After all, it 
is quite possible to shift from the register of play 
into that of hard work, from the wild freedom of 
recess into the necessary restraint of a classroom. 
And I have found that the more free I have been 
on the campus or in the woods with my boys, the 
more cheerfully we have been able to adjust to the 
artificial and relatively gloomy atmosphere of an 
indoors over books. ‘The same boys who have 
crammed me down a trapdoor in our classroom 
floor and kept me there a prisoner until I promised 
a ransom by being more specific in the writing of 
my composition on Courtship and Marriage, 
would, when the bell rang, treat me with all the 
businesslike respect which they accorded Brough, 
who would never have allowed such a liberty even 
if he had been of the slight proportions necessary 
for entrance into that dungeon. ‘The boys respected, 


pase ALT B Oay 241 


admired and liked Brough fully as much as they 
did me, I believe; but that genial teacher of mathe- 
matics, it seemed to me, missed lots of fun! 

Kitty’s relationship to the boys also meant much 
to me in other and more quiet fields than that of 
mere fun. 

I was almost glad when a boy got sick! It 
brought us such an opportunity for getting ac- 
quainted. No early-morning rush, no drill, no bells, 
no study-hours. Just leisure. One could drop in 
for a chat at any time and be thrice welcome. One 
could relax. 

Kit returned one morning from Charlie’s cold 
little den where she had taken him a breakfast of 
cocoa, toast, jam and grapes, on a tray with a 
candle and a rose for sweetness and light. A gloomy 
day. The candle was at once a tonic and a bene- 
diction. ‘The rose was almost like a mother’s face. 
The lad was happy to be laid up. 

She told him the history of her mahogany tray. © 
How Mill had made it for her with deft fingers, 
and carved it graciously with her symbol. Told 
him of the rough little hut in the woods that Mill 
had built in memory of a fine friendship, as elo- 
quent a temple in its primal way as the Taj Mahal 
with its enshrined memory of a great love. She 
made easy the way for a talk between Charlie and 
me on the loyalties of friendship when I called. 
I shared with him some words of Luther Gulick’s 
about a friend. 


242 PPE REAL | BOC 


‘He has believed in me for twenty-seven years. 
He has believed in me at times when others have 
_ not, and when my belief in myself had received some 
hard, unsettling knocks. His belief in me has been 
one of the strengthening and steadying forces of 
my life. He has been loyal to me, and I have felt 
this when I was not with him, as much as when 
I was. He has always seemed to understand what 
I meant, or was driving at, even when I did not 
succeed or even try to state it. He has shared with 
me his longings, hopes, and struggles. We like 
to be together. When I am in trouble it seems 
to hurt him, and when he is troubled it certainly 
hurts me. He has been a rare friend, in that he 
has let me grow and change my ideas. Most of 
my friends seem to demand that I shall remain what 
they first knew and liked me for.” 


Charlie’s cold gave us a chance to be friendly 
against the warm background of Kit’s breakfast, the 
lighted candle, and the opening rose. 


Ill 


Agpawan brought in a handful of green moss 
sprinkled over with tiny gray trumpets that seemed 
to have been placed there, like dim gems in a soft 
setting by the hand of God himself. The boy did 
not ask its name, Latin or English. He wished 
merely to share the spirit of the lovely thing. 

“It was so pretty I bring it to Kitty for your 
house. If you put it in some water I think it will 
not die. Perhaps it be happier in the woods on the 
rock where I find it; but then it does not make 


TA ew ine LG A BI OY 243 


you happier, for you might not find it there. Here 
the boys will come see it too. They do not go often 
far into the woods. Maybe it was not wrong for 
me to bring it.” 

Taking Wordsworth from the shelf, I told Aggie 
he was indeed “‘a lover of the meadows and the 
woods and mountains; and of all that we behold 
from this green earth; of all the mighty world of 
eye and ear—both what they half create, and what 
perceive; well pleased to recognize in nature and 
the language of the sense, the anchor of our purest 
thoughts, the nurse, the guide, the guardian of our: 
hearts and souls and all our moral being.” I feel 
quite sure that he was one of those who feel that 
subtle ‘“‘presence that disturbs one with the joy of 
elevated thoughts; a sense of something far more 
deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of set- 
ting suns, and the round ocean, and the living air, 
and the blue sky, and in the mind of man.” Often 
the boys brought small gifts tc Kit. Aggie brought 
her the very spirit of the woods. He lived more 
poetry than he could ever write. 

While Kitty welcomed flowers and mosses from 
the woods, she set limits to contributions in ento- 
mology. Carter set a large iron pot full of earth- 
worms beside my desk and asked me to keep it safe 
from bait-hungry boys. The long sleek worms came 
out at night, prowling around the periphery of the 
pot, seldom frequenting the central surface of their 
prison. ‘They darted down into their holes when 


24.4 SURG RB BET. B Oy 


I switched on a light. It was fun catching them 
and pulling them gently from the earth. Darwin 
advocated a quick jerk, but my technique was evi- 
dently poor, for I always broke them in two if I 
tried his method. So did the boys. We chose slower 
and safer means. Kitty did not object to the worms 
so long as I kept mud from her living-room floor. 

She allowed me to cultivate the friendship of 
spiders, too. Opie, a fat and gorgeously speckled 
specimen, lived in a corner by my window. Frank 
liked to come in and watch him enmesh flies. When 
the west wind stormed across our lake and wrecked 
Opie’s beautiful parlor, the boy sat for almost a 
whole morning watching the systematic reconstruc- 
tion of that symmetrical web. Agpawan drifted in, 
too, and marveled at the design and pattern which 
he imagined must reside in Opie’s brain. Frank 
commented on the mechanical skill of the geome- 
trist’s deft fingers. Thus poetry and science, or 
science and mysticism perhaps. What a short gap 
between them! Or is the gap only imaginary? Are 
we either Platonists or Aristotelians? It seems to 
me that most of us are a blend of the two. It was 
fun to try to harmonize the viewpoints of Aggie and 
Frank into a single wonderment at the miracle of 
life in action before us. But when Frank brought 
in a wasp one day, to pitch a battle between this 
winged savage and the hungry spider, Kitty burst 
in upon us with a final flat. A wasp was altogether 
too mobile. I could not offer satisfactory guarantee 


Mie On, AD EB Cie 245 


of its behavior. The window must open, and it must 
go! It went. 

Ikey was mobile, too, but he remained too indis- 
posed to arouse Kitty’s fear for her hair. Ikey flew 
in at my window one night and hung upon my rain- 
coat with his hookie little claws. A nervous wretch, 
he would break into querulous little tipy-taps with 
his soft, leathery wings now and then and squeak, 
weakly, as though for a drink or a bit of food. 
But he would not eat the grasshoppers which Mil- 
linder brought to him from the pasture. Nor would 
he drink sweetened milk from my finger. In fact,. 
he punctured my skin with his sharp teeth 
as a sign of gratefulness for my efforts. I put him 
in a glass jar at night, but he crackled there like a 
Fourth of July celebration and I had to turn him 
out and let him hang where he pleased in my study. 
Kitty was not very mournful when the creature died 
and two of the smaller boys removed him for burial 
in the garden. 

“Why does the devil have bat’s wings?’ asked 
Stone, watching the ceremonies. ‘Sometimes I ° 
don’t believe there’s a devil. It would be fun if 
there was one. More fun than angels. I was awful 
disappointed when [ learned that angels were men. 
While I thought they were women, I liked them. 
They were pretty. Men oughtn’t to be pretty like 
that. It was like Santa Claus when I learned there 
aren’t any angels. I wonder if the same thing will 
happen to God, and he'll go, too.” 


246 THE REAL BOY 


The bell clanged before we could enter into theo- 
logical discussion and Ikey was left buried in the 
earth from which Carter had extricated his fish- 
worms. Later Hugo set up a wooden cross to mark 
the last resting-place of the little creature with wings 
like those of the devil. 

With all her lenience toward entomology and its 
invasion of our quarters, Kitty still insisted on some 
measure of civilization in her husband. I must wear 
white collars and a clean shirt at meal-times. I must 
shine my shoes for Sunday. I should remember 
to brush my hair before answering a knock at our 
door. If I was “to teach boys to live’ I must set 
them an example in good manners. So I compro- 
mised and, at meal-times and on Sundays, was quite 
presentable in society. I enjoyed our privilege 
of wearing flannel shirts to classes as well as to 
work, and shoes that were old and comfortable. 
The visits of the barber to our school were infre- 
quent, and how boys love to run their fingers 
through long and tousled hair as they lean 
over books at study time! Yet a Sunday change into 
stiff collars, tight shoes, creased trousers and oiled 
hair was quite tonic to our souls. Even Agpawan 
was quite acceptable once a week in a necktie and 
vest. But after a whole day of dress-parade, how 
gratefully we dropped back into our old clothes 
again! At Kitty’s fireside the flannel shirt, the open 
collar and the corduroy pants running down into 
high laced boots were quite in order, provided soles 


Tho He ROE A Ly. BOY 247 


were not muddy and hands were scrubbed to suf- 
ficient whiteness for the passing of toast or the 
stirring of cocoa. 

Kit had one strong rival for the devotion of the 
boys in the realm of food. Mrs. Arthur made pies 
so thick, so sweet, so flaky of crust that only the 
swifter boys were able to obtain one. At four 
o’clock there was a daily marathon to her cottage 
across the farm. ‘The big boys got there first, and 
left nothing for the smaller fry until Mrs. Arthur, 
compassionate, made it a rule to hide some of her 
handiwork for them in a closet. She also placed > 
.a lower price upon these, knowing the difference 
in home allowances between older and younger boys. 

The boys ran for pie, but they stayed at the cot- 
tage for Art, a primitive caveman in overalls, blue 
flannel shirt and hobnailed boots. Long, sinewy, 
large of paw as Lincoln, skin tanned darker than an 
Indian, fiery of temper and sarcastic of wit, Art was 
an eternal puzzle to us all. His face was sat- 
urnine, as they call such faces in books. He smiled 
too sympathetically to call it Satanic, but he would 
have made a wonderful Mephisto. I believe the 
boys were always a trifle afraid he would eviscerate 
them with a knife, or fill them with lead from his 
shot-gun behind the door. 

Art was a real man to these lads. We teachers 
by comparison were biped bookworms with heads 
full of knowledge and hearts bursting with dis- 


248 PHE REAL BOY 


cipline and order. While we might prattle about 
dead men and lifeless figures, Art would loosen up 
with grim remarks about life as it was this very 
minute. He might explode with: ‘“Godammit, 
now, I’m telling you!” and spit a stream of brown 
tobacco-juice down a knothole in the floor of his 
front porch; but what he had to say was real and 
immediate. Sometimes he would talk about things 
which beloved parents at home would have been 
shocked to know were a part of their boy’s educa- 
tion at school. He would talk about such things 
ungrammatically, but with a vigor that made them 
unforgettable. And his sense was sound. If I had_ 
had a boy at Intervale, I should not have wanted 
him to miss acquaintance with Art as he sat, chair 
back-tilted and feet high on the railing, in the midst 
of a group of pie-eating youngsters. In fact, I 
should have seen to it that my boy got there, first or 
last, to get a memorable and spicy impression of that 
genial roughneck philosopher. 

Pie was one of the few edibles which Kitty could 
not cook upon our open hearth. ‘The boys would 
sometimes bring one back from Mrs. Arthur’s to 
eat beside our crackling logs, for there was only 
an iron stove at the farmhouse. One evening I found 
a symposium upon one’s greatest likes and dislikes 
in life, conducted over pie and cocoa, with Frank 
presiding. I was drawn into its vortex and com- 
manded to jot down on paper, rapidly and in the 
order in which they came to mind, the things which 


THE REAL BOY 244 


I liked most. My list, which I have kept as a 
souvenir of that occasion, reads as follows: 

Browning’s ‘Rabbi Ben Ezra,’’ Beethoven’s Noc. 
turne in G Major, James Stephen’s “‘The Crock of 
Gold,” hot coffee on a cold morning, Lamb’s Es. 
says, Chopin’s Funeral March, swimming by star. 
light, rye bread and cheese with buttermilk, my 
wife, Darwin’s ‘“The Descent of Man,” kids, naked 
and full of the devil, Mount Orizaba, firelight, 
prickly pears, Rodin’s ‘La Vielle Haultemiere,” The 
Book of Ecclesiastes, waffles with maple sirup, Isa- 
dora Duncan’s dancing, poker... . 3 

Here my time was cut short. The boys now chal- 
lenged me to reassemble these items in the order of 
their importance, and dared me to put my wife other 
than first upon the list! Kitty smiled, and relieved 
me of any commitment whatever by launching a dis. 
cussion upon relative values, and upon the impossi. 
bility of making satisfactory categories without going 
into details of comparison impossible with things so 
different in nature as a waffle and a mountain or a 
symphony. 

Such were some of the hours spent together by 
teacher and boy and teacher’s wife. I am sure that 
after all I ever said or did among my pupils is for- 
gotten, that Kitty’s waffles, doughnuts, roast rabbit, 
coffee and tomato-soup in their setting of candle- 
light, music and singing kettle over flaming log will 
remain vivid memories of happy hours and that 


250 CH ae Buy, 


through them all will play the winsome smile of a 
charming hostess who loved “kids.” 

Had Kitty felt, however, that, as a member of 
the faculty she must entertain the boys, had we felt 
it our duty or obligation to be sociable, what a differ- 
ent atmosphere there would have been in our home! 
I remember how dismally proper we boys felt at 
Mohegan when we were invited as guests to Mrs. 
Water’s elegant living-room. Doubtless those re- 
ceptions were good for our manners as gentlemen of 
society; but I doubt if they ever touched our souls. 
A dim memory of thin sandwiches and very sweet 
cocoa remains with me, with vague recollections of 
perfumed ladies in silk gowns with pompadour hair. 
There may have been a fire on the hearth. I do not 
recall it. ‘These ‘‘at-homes” were relieving accents 
to our monastic days, but I do not grow homesick 
for a return of those rare occasions, as Intervale 
boys tell me they have grown for a leg of chicken 
to be gnawed when sitting on a chopping block while 
Fritz Kreisler played his Liebeslied from an oaken 
cabinet. Kitty had learned the art of the hostess in 
the woods. She had learned to cook by open fires 
built next to sheltering rocks. She could do many 
things with a few, but well chosen tools. She could 
build three fires on the hearth, each for its appointed 
work, and broil on one while she fried on another 
and boiled on the third. Afterwards she would fuse 
these fires together into a friendship blaze by which 
to talk, or to dream in silence. 


Lr ee RAST Po, BiG ive 251 


“Low blowing winds from out a midnight sky 
The falling embers and a kettle’s croon: 
These three, but O, what sweeter lullaby 
Ever woke beneath a winter’s moon?” 


I sat by one of these evening fires after the fiasco 
of my first attempt at writing the composition which 
the boys prescribed, resolving to do better on the 
following Monday. 


CHAPTER XII 


A FEW WORDS ON HISTORY 


Man is explicable by nothing less than all his his- 
tory. There is a relation between the hours of 
our life and the centuries of time. There is prop- 
erly no history; only biography. All that Shake- 
speare says of a king, yonder slip of a boy who reads 
in the corner, feels to be true of himself. 
—EMERSON. 


I 


THE current of history swept me away, saving me 
from the perplexity of finishing the composition on 
my courtship and marriage. After several failures 
at attempted enlistment in the army, due to under- 
weight, I was finally admitted into the First Indiana 
Infantry by a sympathetic sergeant who must have 
put his foot on the scale when he weighed me. When 
I returned to Intervale in a khaki uniform and carry- 
ing a gun, which the Captain said I might show to 
the boys, my contract was canceled and I was 
allowed to lecture upon the war instead. 

History, not for knowledge but for imaginative 
joy, and for the purpose of sketching in a biographi- 
cal background for our own lives, had been my 
motive as I faced my classes. Knowledge, I felt, 
would accumulate as a necessary by-product of our 

252 


aeRO EAI BOW 253 


interest in the romance of mankind. I depended little 
upon questions, examinations, themes, or text; but 
watched how a boy would read a book, or a news- 
paper, or listen to a story, or bring me a question of 
his own. Curriculum history was a much more 
plastic and mobile item than literature and it pre- 
sented a wide range of subsidiary interests, especi- 
ally as we drifted towards an active part in the great 
war. 

The war brought us that more interesting history 
which has not been written because it has not yet 
occurred. Ajax, Achilles, Charlemagne, Richard, © 
Napoleon, Washington and Grant suddenly became 
dimly distant and archaic figures, hardly comparable 
to Joffre, Foch and Pershing. Our vision of men 
and events was thrown completely out of perspective. 
The boys pored over required reading in ancient his- 
tory with the avidity of one trying to read a descrip- 
tion of the burning of Rome while his own house was 
ablaze. We lived in a vital present and a fascinating 
future. We cared more for what would happen to- 
morrow morning than for all that had occurred since 
mankind left trees or caves and began to live in 
houses. ‘Time flew with the speed of bullets. 

Yet even current history from newspapers and 
journals was somewhat disembodied and hollow. I 
tried to squeeze educational values from the hundred 
neologisms of the hour, the patriotic eloquence of 
editors, and the speeches of our President. The 
boys, however, wanted military drill in uniform, with 


254 MPO SR EEEAY BOY 


lots of sham-battle. Parents backed this desire, and 
I wondered if Intervale would become a military 
school under pressure of wartime. 

Modern warfare, we older people saw, was a 
vast engineering enterprise. It required the use of 
complicated machinery, and the coordination of 
myriad lines of practical and technical work, some 
of it very highly specialized. Fundamentally, the 
ability to handle tools, the habit of team-work on 
jobs, and capacity for long, strenuous labor seemed 
the prerequisites for a potential soldier, and not 
merely the mastery of an army field-manual. If 
Intervale was to contribute its best toward the win- 
ning of the war, we thought it better to devote our 
energies to fundamentals. We did not know how 
long the war would last. We felt that a boy who 
lacked training in these foundation elements of 
modern strife would be handicapped, however much 
he might drill and shoot at targets. So we stood out 
for a while against militarization. 

Living on seven hundred acres of farm-land, we 
had the resources of a diminutive nation to draw 
upon, and to get ready to defend. Farm tools and 
shop tools were ours. We built roads, dug ditches 
for drainage, made repairs, harvested crops, sawed 
and chopped wood for use instead of coal as fuel. 
Indoors there awaited geography, history, chemis- 
try, physics and mathematics. Was not this enough? 

But our alumni were joining the army, some of 
our seniors disappeared and sent us word that they 


ata EA BOY) 255 


were trying for the navy, or the air-corps, or train- 
ing camp. 

Yet, despite the logic of reason, my heart went 
out to the little fellows who wanted to be set on 
guard duty and learn to charge bayonets! War I 
might abhor, like Richard Le Gallienne, but the 
sound of drums and the “quadrupedante putrem 
sonitu quatit ungula campum’’ was still very sweet to 
my ears. How I had thrilled at pictures of Admiral 
Dewey, resplendent in blue and gold against a back- 
ground of flaming cannon and bursting shell, back 
in the days of our Spanish war. My head told me | 
that I should try to teach the great lessons of war- 
fare behind the lines; but my fingers ached to beat 
a march with drumsticks at the head of a company 
of charging youngsters! 

David spilling water from his helmet, the handful 
at Marathon, Horatio, Galahad, Saladin, Washing- 
ton at Valley Forge and Lee at Appomattox: these 
remain a precious heritage to the youth of the world 
forever. Perhaps out of the Great War would be 
distilled a few stories comparable to these. France 
and Belgium, of course, were luminous with the 
glory of good losing, of epic sportsmanship; but 
their story was too vast for us at the time. Even the 
personal heroes of the war loomed too large for per- 
spective. Empey and Private Pete and the gloomy 
Kitchener spoke more personally to us than Joffre. 
Newspaper headlines eclipsed any ideas or rumina- 
tions that might come to us from “Mr. Britling Sees 


256 Jeli “REALL > Bo Ooy 


It) Through.” Wel lived,as. it) were, inastog 
charged with electric excitement. 


II 


“A man of weak character thinks vaguely. A 
man of clear intellectual decisions acts with precision 
and is free from vacillation. A country of educated 
men acts coherently, smites swiftly, plans ahead; a 
country of confused education is a country of essen- 
tial muddle.” This thought of Wells’ went with 
me up the hill to class one morning. The boys 
wanted to know what they were being educated for, 
especially as regards the aftermath of war. ‘“‘Is it 
practical? Where will it get me? What will the 
war do to the world that concerns my schooling 
now?” If I could have shifted them onto a national 
register of thinking and feeling! If we could have 
dragged America out of history books, and civics, 
and newspapers and made it vividly apparent that 
this acreage of ours and our actual population of 
men and women and boys is America! ‘To shift the 
questions in their minds from ‘‘What will education 
do for me?” to “What can I do to make me better 
able to do something for America!” We should get 
more democracy right here, have a student council 
or congress, elections, districts, court and a working 
machinery of government motivated by a definitive 
purpose to get certain specific things done if we (as 
America) were to do things coherently, smite swiftly, 
and plan ahead. 


ret he BALI. \B Gay; 257 


I look back now and think of those days when the 
boys demanded military training, when they made 
me drum that they might march. For all about me 
I find youngsters in khaki, see them drilling near our 
high-schools under army appointees. I meditate 
with William C. Allen, recalling that “prior to 1914 
even Germany, with all her sins, did not put her 
youth of our high school age under military train- 
ing. .. . Is America, after belaboring with vehe- 
ment Bneeeh and two million men the Prussianism of 
Germany, now, almost unrealized by herself, assum- 
ing the burdens and hazards of a Prussianism trans- - 
ported to America ?” 

Mr. Allen thinks and feels in terms of friendliness 
and happy social and political and economic rela- 
tionships between peoples. He has put into words 
what I, as a foreign-born American citizen, with a 
childhood spent in a neighboring nation, and having 
taught boys in America from a number of foreign 
countries, feel, expresses my own inward reaction to 
the trends all about me in these so-called reconstruc- 
tion years. Says Mr. Allen: 


‘“The people abroad do not understand us; they 
are asking: ‘Why this pushing of the military spirit 
among the youth of America, why these training 
camps, these training corps in the high schools, why 
this development of attention to the possible scien- 
tific slaughter of masses of men with the latest kill- 
ing machinery ? Whom is America intending to 
attack?’ America needs friends—are we supinely 


258 ME REAL \B-OvY 


drifting into a course that is depriving us of them? 
How shall we meet this real national menace? Shall 
we pursue the old, old alluring system of arming 
which all history teaches eventually leads to national 
rivalries, exhaustion and disaster? Shall the innate 
idealism of our splendid boys be misdirected into 
relying upon methods of defense that our own gen- 
eration has proved to be an awful sham? Shall not 
our moral and political position be strengthened by 
allaying the apprehensions of other peoples as to our 
designs regarding them? Will it not be infinitely 
safer and more profoundly in harmony with a sane 
conception of real patriotism to instruct our high 
school boys in the principles of international justice 
and good will?” 


I am tempted to quote here the words of still an- 
other observer, a man of business who believes that 
‘children have always been, and will continue to be, 
the most engaging and distinguished arrivals on the 
shore of the Present from the old Sea of Life stretch- 
ing behind us everywhere.” Says Mr. Yeomans: 


‘“We show too many indications in America that 
we have learned nothing from the intolerant regimen- 
tation which caused the downfall of a people by mak- 
ing efficiency, intellect and conceit take the place of 
understanding and sympathy. ... The thing that 
causes all the trouble in the world is the undernour- 
ished and starved soul. It can live only on one diet, 
part of which can be provided by science, but most of 
which is composed of mysteries which can not be 
weighed or analyzed and which are the determining 
factors in human relationships, and the essential 


Tie REAL BOW 259 


nutriment of the soul. You can train it in strength 
and you can train it in self-control but you must also 
train it in sympathy. and in love in equal measure or 
in its demoniac frenzy it will surely tear the world to 
pieces and destroy itself.” 


History, to contribute its part to a training in sym- 
pathy and brotherly love, must point more and more 
to the biographies of sympathetic and lovable indi- 
viduals. It must concentrate on Buddha, Jesus, 
Asoka, Lincoln, Lee and their kindred spirits as 
molders of the highest human destiny. It must 
recognize the soul as the most important and effec- - 
tive part of any human being, and point to great 
souls. instead of to great Czesars, Napoleons, and 
their modern national, political and industrial suc- 
cessors. For history one might say what Doctor 
Eliot of Harvard has said of the religion of the 
future, that it ‘will pay homage to all righteous and 
loving persons who in the past have exemplified, and 
made intelligible to their contemporaries, intrinsic 
goodness and effluent good will. It will treasure up 
allalesmonhuman excellence: and) virtue.) Ltyiwill 
reverence the discoverers, teachers, martyrs, and 
apostles of liberty, purity, and righteousness.”’ 

The world conference on education carried 
through so dramatically by the National Education 
Association is a symbol and symptom of what is 
going to happen in the vital field of applied history: 


“There were Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Prot- 
estant, Christian and Pagan, but there was spirit 


260 deHiE) "REAL .BOY 


of religion, the intermingled spirit of Confucius, of 
Buddha, of Zoroaster, of Mohammed, and of 
Christ. ‘This spirit exemplified the choicest of the 
teachings of these great philosophers who taught the 
religion and philosophy which affect humanity vitally 
and eternally. There was the spirit of fraternity 
and brotherly love. 

‘The close of the conference was marked by a 
remarkable demonstration symbolic of world-unity. 
Quite unconsciously, it seemed, each person in the 
assembly caught the hand of his neighbor; someone 
began singing Auld Lang Syne, and they clasped 
hands in an historic circle—Hindu, English, Ger- 
man, French, Chinese, Greek and Italian—a cross- 
section of the world, joining hands across the tradi- 
tional political borders of nations—all united in 
one great purpose, the education of the youth of the 
world.” 


Already, says Augustus O. Thomas, from whose 
report I have quoted, there are a million teachers 
federated into a definitive program of international 
education. The World Federation, born of the 
first World Conference on Education has begun such 
an experiment in the teaching of history as one can 
believe in with all his soul. Its single principle is 
“to make the children of one country love the chil- 
dren of another’ and I, for one, believe this to be 
just as possible as to make the children of one coun- 
try hate those of another, a fact we have all too 
clearly seen and felt. , 

Furthermore, history must be taught and learned 


Apri RIE ALE SBUOVY 261 


in the spirit of the scientist, not of the national 
patriot. Its technique must be that of ‘“‘group co- 
operation in pursuit of social truth,” leading toward 
a cosmopolitan, or international mind. As Harry 
Overstreet puts it in an illuminating paper aimed 
against the practice of debating in schools because 
debates are founded upon the principle of fighting to 
win: 


“Our problem is to develop in our students a con- 
stant readiness to regard every disputed issue—from 
the simplest issues of everyday life to the most com- 
plicated issues of politics—not as a signal for intel- 
lectual battle, but as an opportunity for a fascinating, 
creative effort toward the working out of an effective 
agreement. When we have succeeded in doing this, 
we shall achieve in our students the first essential of 
the international mind.”’ 


Surely history, with such an evolutionary back- 
ground as Wells gives it, and Van Loon, and Hillyer, 
is basically cultural, ethical, moral and religious. 
Why all this uproar about courses in ethics, moral 
instruction and religious training for our schools? 
No story of mankind is complete which does not in- 
clude all the major elements of religion, ethics, phi- 
losophy and art. It throws us constantly into the 
realm of conduct. It brings us under the shadow of 
the Almighty. It expands and explains Carruth’s 
little masterpiece of evolution in poetic form. It is 
the mountain-peaks of human thought which we need 
to scale in learning the art of life. History speaks 


262 RILE READ BOY 


them for us. The details we can readily omit. The 
secret of good teacherhood lies largely in the answer 
he may receive to Stevenson’s favorite prayer, 
“Tord, teach us to Omit!” 

My boys were responsive to questions such as 
‘What part of history am I, right now? What can 
Ido? Where shall I stand? Whom shall I follow? 
What does the past show me about the rules of the 
game today? Who was finer stuff, Napoleon or 
Gladstone, Cesar or St. Francis, Galahad or 
Launcelot?’’ History to these boys became an inti- 
mate biography of heroes and villains. At least, I 
felt that it should become so. I believed that it was 
only through an understanding of the contrast be- 
tween hero and villain that a philosophy of history 
could be learned and become a part of that education 
which Wells calls ‘‘the preparation of the individual 
for an understanding and willing codperation in the 
world’s affairs.” 

I have entitled this chapter ‘““A Few Words on 
History” because, looking back upon those war-time 
days when this was one of my subjects, I am be- 
wildered at the thought of having tried to compre- 
hend the vastness of the storm amidst which we lived, 
and moved, and had our being. I remember a chaos 
of newspapers, journals, speeches, lectures and bond- 
selling campaigns; but what really counted with us 
was the intimately personal. A card from Heth 
saying only ‘“The ship on which [ sailed has arrived 
safely overseas” meant more to us than the scream- 


Aen he RR AI BOY, 263 


ing headlines about new battle-fronts. To send a 
pipe to one of our Intervale boys in the Marines was 
an event of much keener interest to me than subscrib- — 
ing for a Liberty Bond. ‘The war itself we had to 
take for granted. We could not learn history from 
it, we were a living part of it, however distant from 
trenches and no-man’s land. Allow me, then, to re- 
treat from so huge a theme with merely this passing 
word and return to the boys with their thoughts and 
feelings as they moved in other realms. We shall 
touch on History again in Chapter XIV. 


CHAPTER XIII 


BOY RELIGION IN THE MAKING .- 


In his moral attributes God is for every man the 
multiplication to infinity of all the noblest, tender- 
est, and most potent qualities which that man has 


ever seen or imagined in a human being. 
—CHARLES W. ELIOT. 


I 


Boys came to me at Intervale predisposed either 
toward or against orthodox concepts of God and 
religion, or else inquisitive about them. My diary 
records that on one Monday morning God entered 
English VIII by way of Frank Edmunds, who 
quoth: 

‘Wonder am I an evolutionist or not? Now 
Art (our farmer mechanic and versatile man of all 
jobs) is a free-thinker, he says, and believes in evo- 
lution. Wish I knew what it was all about. He 
says it’s better than God; but it seems sort of mixed 
up. A lot of fossils and animals and geology.” To 
which Charlie Baker piped up: “There must be 
some sort of God to keep evolution running. How 
could it work if somebody wasn’t working it?’ And 
to which Marco, the cynic: ‘‘Well, we’re all ferti- 

264 


Ea Re ICCAD? BO) aye 265 


lizer when we’re croaked, so what’s the difference 
anyhow ?”’ 

We hopped through that class period in ani- 
mated fragments of discussion from corporeal de- 
composition to stellar nebula, from nebule to 
jelly-fish and horned coral, from coral to planets, 
planets to monkeys, monkeys to appendices and ear- 
muscles, back to monkeys and planets again with all 
the nimble agility of boy-mind, which knows no 
obstacle, but leaps about the entire universe accord- 
ing to its whimsical will. The thoughts of youth 
are short, short thoughts, and indefinitely variable. 

I ran down to my den, and brought back Langdon 
Smith’s comically profound little poem, ‘‘When you 
were a tadpole and I was a fish,” to which the boys 
listened with a sort of amused awe. ‘That started a 
theosophical tangent into metempsychosis and re- 
incarnation; but I switched back to Darwin and 
promised to tell the story of the voyage of the 
Beagle and how the idea of evolution first took 
scientific form. 

“But what do you think of evolution?’ demanded 
Frank. 

I took chalk, and wrote upon the board, Walt- 
mason style: 


‘A fire-mist and a planet, a crystal and a cell, a 
jelly-fish and a saurian, and caves where Cave Men 
dwell: then a sense of love and beauty, and a face 
turned from the clod: some call it Evolution, and 
others call it God.” 


266 oR RAO vB Ou: 


‘That is my idea, Frank,” I replied. ‘Herbert 
Carruth has put my conception of God and Evolution 
into a very small space of words. But it would 
take me a long time to make my own meaning clear 
to you all. If you like, we’ll start a class in evo- 
lution and make it a part of our history work, as 
the idea of evolution certainly ought to lie back of 
a study of human history.” ‘The boys voted aye, 
and it was to be. 


I quoted T. R. on the value of Bible-reading one 
day in English IV. Dorian kept turning the pages 
of a school Bible while I talked. When I was 
through he asked if he might read and, permission 
granted, he began: 


66 


48. And in the mountains of Shamir and Jatir, 
Secoh 

49. And Danah and Kirjathsanah, which is Debir 

50. And Anab, and Eshtemoth, and Anim.”’ 


‘Sixteen paragraphs like that on one page, Mr. 
Hamilton. Several chapters following filled with 
the same sort of stuff. Seem to be whole books full 
of the names of dead people. Why should anybody 
but a preacher buy a book like that? Why not cut 
out all such dusty stuff and leave just a few good 
stories and maybe some poetry, like the psalms, al- 
though most of them don’t sound much good.”’ 

Is not the boy right? The convict who found 
that there are 66 books, 1,189 chapters, 31,173 


(DeARE eel (Ey) BQ ty, 267 


verses, 773,692 words and 3,586,489 letters in the 
Bible enjoyed his one solitary job of reading it word 
for word. He also discovered that the 21st verse 
of the 7th chapter of Ezra contains all the letters 
of the alphabet except the letter J; that the longest 
verse is the 9th verse of the 8th chapter of Esther 
and the shortest the 35th verse of the 11th chapter 
of St. John. This jail-bird, like an old Civil-War 
veteran friend of mine who reads the Bible through 
once a year, is entitled to all the joy he can wring 
from Hebraic genealogy and Mosaic hygiene; but I 
had been asked as a teacher to recommend the read- 
ing of the Bible to my boys. I could do so only 
with reservations. I failed to feel the talismanic 
spiritual effect of reading about the mountains of 
Shamir and Jatir, and I looked forward to an ab- 
breviated Bible, about 150,000 words long and 
written not in modern English, but in the King 
James words attributed to Moses, David, Solomon, 
Job and the Saints. I have no quarrel with the in- 
spiringly readable old Anglican Bible, but only with 
its accumulation of utterly irrelevant lumber. I 
should like boys to enjoy the heart of the great 
book with the same relish that has been mine. Why 
must we present them with volumes from some of 
whose pages merely dust arises to irritate their 
eyes? 

Austin threatened to make way with the row of 
“Bible Story” books on our shelf before I should 
afflict the class with them. ‘They were used as texts 


268 LAE REAL BOY 


the year before. A dreary, unillustrated set of 
schoolly volumes. ‘There was no danger that I 
should use them. 

‘“Ain’t even the real Bible stuff,’ declaimed 
Jobbie) oS ileveliread wall’ the nealedopesvoomenar 
them old guys who were in so strong with God put 
over pretty raw deals sometimes. Abe, Ike and 
Jake and Joseph turned some tricks on folks that 
preachers wouldn’t recommend today.” He began 
to grow eloquent, as though visited by a pentecostal 
gift of tongues; but even the free atmosphere of our 
classroom could not be charged with his vivid 
memories of a certain “Bible in Burlesque” which 
he had one day perused in an old book-store. Later 
he and I agreed that it was only right to others, 
holding different views and feelings, that we should 
keep cynical iconoclasms to ourselves unless there 
was very patent demand for their expression. Re- 
membering my Mohegan days, I hoped that we 
might together enjoy a liberal discussion of such 
biblical themes as might crop up in our midst. I 
discovered, however, much to my regret, that some- 
times a certain censorship as well as a certain gui- 
dance, was called for. 

My battle for the Bible continued. I did not want 
a spirit of cynicism to grow among the older boys. 
But neither did I want an uncritical acceptance of 
the book as a fetish or talisman. I wished it read 
with as much independence and broadness of mind 
as a lad could bring to it. A dip into our youngsters’ 


Tera hneA TD BOW 269 


memories did not indicate any close acquaintance 
with even the high-lights of biblical biography. 
Wayang, whose early training in a Mission school 
came to his rescue, rated highest, 65, and the others 
tapered down to zero. Catchy guess-work most of 
it, blind shots, hoping some would hit. Moses, I 
found, was: a follower of Jesus, leader of the dis- 
ciples, born in bulrushes, a “profit,” king of the 
Israelites, leader of the Christians who left Egypt. 
Pharaoh was king of the Philistines, Persians, Jews, 
Egyptians, and a wise prophet. Aaron was: some 
relation to Cain, son of Moses, man with a rod © 
who made water out of rocks. Ruth was: a Jewish 
lady who married a king and had no parents, wrote 
a book of the Bible, wept at Jesus’ Cross, gave Christ 
a drink of water, found Moses in the bulrushes. 
The Ark of the Covenant was: a book where the 
spirit of the Lord was kept, a boat built for God, a 
thing that brought luck to whoever had it, the 
place where God lived when the world was flooded. 
There were some correct answers. ‘These samples 
indicate, not a sense of humor, but a distortion of 
mental imagery, akin to that of a little girl of three 
who told me, after Sunday-school, that “‘Jesus she 
is a nice lady who wears long curls like my mama’s, 
has white clothes and lives south-west,” a perfectly 
genuine and naive statement of what, to the child, 
were the facts in the case. 

In Ancient History we struck the early Christian 
Church. Lorenzo wanted to know why if Joseph 


240 PiU REAL. BOY 


was not the father of Jesus, the latter was descended 
from David who was an ancestor of Joseph and not 
of Mary. An age-old question, but ever bobbing 
up anew. How easily the boy mind penetrates these 
theological clouds. How difficult it is for a teacher 
to compromise, or to shelve, or to side-step such an 
issue. For the boy there is no question of etymol- 
ogy, or exegesis, or higher criticism. For him a 
statement is true, or it lies. Yet when there is room 
for doubt, he is fair enough, witness Ryan, who de- 
clared: 

“Never was any flood at all. Nile just over- 
flowed one day and a guy called Noah got into a 
big boat while other people drowned. Maybe he 
took some cows and sheep and dogs with him. Then 
folks made it into a big story. Some of those stories 
were good, though. I like the way Samson beat up 
those . . . what do you call them? I read the 
Bible pretty near through to get a shot-gun from my 
dad:? 

We read together about Babylonian tablets, and 
archeological discoveries bearing out biblical lore. 
My head grew puzzled as to how all these historical 
fragments might be fitting themselves into the heads 
of the boys, either as knowledge, or as a part of 
their actual or possible religion. What was my job 
as a teacher of boys? It was a relieving tonic and 
anodyne to retreat to Agpawan, the one soul among 
all these many who seemed to be deliberately build- 
ing something within him from this apparent chaos. 


MEE REE AIL BOON 271 


II 


Agpawan wished to teach his people about God, 
and the soul. He was a typical Prometheus, a 
torch-bearer, a passer-on, a self-forgetter and a 
very possible source of spiritual contagion if set 
down amidst a primitive people who would listen to 
his words with open hearts. I was sorry that he 
wished to go to church one Sunday, for what we 
found there was typical of just that theological 
bunkum with which rural America teems. I used 
to grow indignant that preachers were paid so little. 
Now I know the reason why, and wonder that they 
are paid as generously for their canned wares as 
church statistics show. I used to think it a pity that 
our country churches were dying out so fast. After 
the experience J had with Agpawan, I marvel that 
there are people enough so parched of soul as 
pomeiakceuticite existence possibiey. at) all.) tne 
memory of that frenetic little red-haired man with 
windmill arms and a voice like a fine file drawn 
across the rim of a glass tumbler will remain with 
me for years. His exegesis of the gospel of Jesus 
would have been grotesquely comical had not 
Agpawan sat beside me. I thought I could feel him 
wriggle with sheer pain. It was joy to step out 
from that ugly, airless, dismal church into the star- 
lit night. When we reached the walnut trees, 
Agpawan grasped my arm in his strong brown hand 


272 THE REAL BOY 


and said, ‘‘Maestro, one feels nearer to God out 
herets 

‘The moon is full,’ I wrote one night in my 
journal. “The frozen lake lies like a great green 
plate of glass. Stars shine almost painfully bright 
in the sky despite the flooding moonlight. ‘The air 
is still, and crisp, and sweet to one’s lungs and 
blood. But the boys are all crouched over their 
tables and desks. ‘They are worrying over sub- 
stantive clauses, or reading about a dead French 
king, or solving a problem in disembcdied numbers. 
When nights are so glorious as this one, why not 
worship their splendor with nocturnal holiday? 
Why should a printed calendar determine our days 
or nights of celebration? Why not reap the moon- 
lit harvest of joy that awaits us this very hour? 
Tomorrow? Why, tomorrow I myself may be with 
yesterday's seven thousand years! It seems almost 
criminal to keep those boys in their cabins over 
books and papers on a night such as this. Oh, to 
beat my drum and lead them all forth and turn 
study-hour into the joy of living!” After writing 
thus I was not content to stay indoors. If I could 
not rouse the whole school to join me, at least I 
could take a walk with one of the boys, and so I 
pried Agpawan from his meditations upon x squared 
minus y squared over z in parenthesis cubed, and we 
started around the lake. ‘The ice was crackling and 
groaning like a gigantic bullfrog. ‘Trees snapped 
like small caliber rifles. ‘The light snow on the 


THE REAL BOY 273 


shore-line was crisp as singing dune-sands under our 
feet. I believe we grew literally drunk with the 
beauty of the moon shadows and the wine-dry 
tingle of the frosty air. Aggie was spellbound and 
ecstatic by turns. He would run, jump, gesticulate 
and shout; then sink into an almost funereal pace of 
musing silence before breaking into words. 

“Better than much hunting,” he said. ‘I love 
woods and night alone. I love them for themselves. 
They make me forget ugly things. Make me forget 
that Mr. Roosevelt shoots lions. Make me feel 
happy thought again.” 7 

Aggie had borrowed my copy of “African Game 
Trails,” and its gory pictures of scientific butchery 
had taken their place among the little brown man’s 
constellation of “ugly things.’’ Here was a direct 
descendant of a long line of Igorote head-hunters, a 
boy of the Bontoc bush nourished with ululating war- 
songs and bred among brandishing spears, yet so 
responsive to the witcheries of winter moonlight 
that even Mr. Roosevelt’s pardonable killings be- 
came happily forgettable. 

“Aggie,” I said. “You say this is better than 
hunting. Do you not like to hunt?” 

“Yes, Maestro; but I like this better. I like 
better, too, that idea of hunt animals with camera 
instead of gun. I take a camera to the Philippines. 
I teach my people the new way. Tonight I feel love 
for animals, like for man. ‘This night is so beauti- 
ful. It makes everything so except the ugly things. 


274 HE REwWL BOY 


I forget them, or remember them without it hurt.” 

Again and again I have found that the night has 
power to draw-out, to educate our souls. Little fires 
before bed-time; music floating up to the tents and 
cabins and tree-houses from the lake at the hour 
when boys are drifting to sleep; a walk down that 
“ribbon of moonlight,” the friendly road; conversa- 
tion alternate with silence atop a gray bowlder 
underneath the stars; floating off into dream-land 
at the bottom of a canoe: these influences, circum- 
stances, atmospheres are always ready to lend their 
helping hand to teacherhood. ‘Their subtle values 
have scarce been tapped. 


Ill 


My boys of English VIII each wrote an im- 
promptu, classroom biography of Jesus. I asked 
that they write briefly, telegraphically, simply giving 
me the high-spots in their memory of his story. 
From the bunch I have picked a series of sentences 
which, when strung together, give a pretty fair com- 
posite picture of Jesus in the mind of a boy, simple, 
straightforward and almost entirely shorn of mys- 
tical fringes. 


‘There was once a man called Jesus who was a 
carpenter but turned into a preacher and was killed 
by the Jews. Some say he was the son of God and 
some say that the Holy Ghost was his father. When 
he was twelve he got talking to some old men in a 
church and his folks went home without him. A lot 


THe RE ANWR OY. 275 


of kids got killed when Jesus was born because a 
king was scared that he might grow up and be a 
king too. One day a woman poured oil on his feet 
and mopped it up with her hair. Jesus said if you 
get hit on one side of the face to turn around and 
get hit on the other. He was called The Lamb of 
God. He walked on water and didn’t sink. He 
caught fishes and made them grow into more fishes 
to'feed/a lotvot people! \One’man got up.a tree to 
see Jesus go by and Jesus told him to get down and 
go have dinner with him somewheres. He cured 
people. One time he raised a dead man from a 
cemetery. Once a pigeon flew down when Jesus was 
taking a bath in a river and lit on him. Jesus was 
walking one day after he died and his friends didn’t 
recognize him. He was crucified up on a hill with 
two robbers on each side of him. He had a crown 
of thorns put on him by the soldiers. He was a 
good man and shouldn’t have been killed. It was 
Judas who snitched on him and got him caught.” 


This, I say, is an epitome from a batch of com- 
positions. I do not think it does justice to the at- 
titude even of my somewhat specialized group of 
high-school boys. I do not cite it as typical of boy- 
mind at all. Jesus probably entered their souls and 
affected their thinking processes in very different 
guise from that reflected in their written words. I 
recall a conversation with Hugo, recorded in my 
journal which suggests what I mean. 


‘Is there any such thing as Jesus?” asked Hugo. 
“TI don’t half believe it, but half I do. I did some- 


276 THES-REAL BOY 


thing wrong the other day and I knew it was wrong. 
None of you teachers knew it, nor the boys, but I 
had a feeling inside that Jesus knew it and was 
watching me. Guess I got the idea in Sunday- 
school. It isn’t God. He don’t seem to bother me. 
It’s just Jesus; but I can’t really believe he’s chasing 
after me to see what Ido. I wonder if there is any 
such thing.” 

‘Don’t you suppose it’s your conscience?” I re- 
plied. ‘‘Maybe your mind has put the idea of Jesus 
there where your conscience belongs. Conscience is 
that part of you which has learned the difference be- 
tween right and wrong. It tells you in what the Bible 
calls a ‘still small voice’ what you ought to do, and 
what you ought not.”’ 

i; ButlismtJesusirealie’ 

‘‘Jesus was a man who had some firm ideas as to 
what is right and wrong. He spoke them hard. He 
spoke them so hard it hurt folks who thought differ- 
ently. It got him into trouble, and he was finally 
killed for speaking out what he thought. But his 
ideas have lasted for two thousand years and most 
folks haven’t been able to live up to them, but a lot 
of people are trying. ‘These ideas have helped build 
up that part of our selves which we call conscience. 
In a sense it may be Jesus who was speaking to you, 
because a man lives in his words sometimes long 
after he himself is dead, like one’s mother who dies 
and leaves memories of what she has said in our 
mind.’ 

“Well, anyhow, I did something wrong, and 
didn’t seem to care about that; but I worried about 
Jesus. I guess if it was only my conscience I won’t 
bother about it any more.” 

Did I do violence to a possible mental and moral 


Mitten AST B GY vip hys 


watch-dog within the lad in my attempt to answer 
his question as best I knew how? His reaction 
puzzled me. 


It was my desire to acquaint my boys with the 
character of Jesus in such a way that a strong, vig- 
orous impression might be made. Not like that of 
my own boyhood when Jesus was a gentle, motherly 
soul on whose shoulder one might weep in time of 
trouble. Thus are first impressions made, and how 
they last! I wished my boys to carry with them pic- 
tures of Jesus elbowing his way into the temple 
crowd, a scourge in his hand; or telling the devil to 
go back to hell out on the desert; or standing erect 
before Pilate, the Roman governor and making him 
feel ashamed of himself and all his tinsel power. 
But most of my boys came to me with their impres- 
sions firmly fixed, most of them mythical, cloudy and 
theologic. I worked here, as it were, in clay already 
hardened in the sun. 

“Are you a Catholic?’ Edmunds asked, picking 
up my small copy of Thomas a Kempis and leafing 
over the pencil-marked pages. 

‘There was inquisitiveness among the boys as to 
what my religion might be. ‘They seem to have 
classified all the other members of the faculty, ex- 
cepting Halley, perhaps; and every once in a while 
a controversy crops up as to what brand was mine. 
I presumed Edmunds would spread the news of St. 
Thomas, and arouse new speculation. 


278 THE Rea BiOey 


“JT sincerely like certain things the Catholic 
Church has given us,” I answered; ‘‘and this is one 
of them. While I cannot swallow his philosophy 
whole, any more than I can that of St. Paul or Her- 
bert Spencer, I do taste, swallow and digest parts of 
him with great relish and spiritual profit. Perhaps 
you will, too, some day. ‘These things are for us 
each individually, I guess, and a little book like that 
is to be read, not talked about.” 

I asked him to sit down and read me some of the 
marked paragraphs; just for fun. These were 
among them: 


‘The more a man is united within himself, and in- 
teriorly simple, the more and higher things doth he 
understand without labor; because he receives the 
light of understanding from above. 

‘‘A pure, simple, and steady spirit is not dissipated 
by a multitude of affairs, because he performs them 
all to the honor of God, and endeavors to be at rest 
within himself, and free from all seeking of himself. 

‘A good and devout man first disposes his works 
inwardly which he is to do outwardly. 

‘Oh! if men would use as much diligence in root- 
ing out vices and planting virtues as they do in pro- 
posing questions, there would not be so great evils 
committed, nor scandals among the people.” 


‘“That’s something like the Bible, ain’t it? Do the 
Catholics use the same Bible as we do, or is it 
different ?”’ 

My talk with this inquisitive boy following his 


Te ERE AT, BOW 279 


question inspired me to start a course in compara- 
tive religions, and to show how much of essential 
oneness there is in all of them, despite their childish 
schisms and minutie. Of course I did no such 
thing, for time was precious, and we were to read 
“The Vicar of Wakefield” and learn to tell con- 


junctions from adverbs. 


IV 


“Mr. Hamilton, I don’t get you at all. Some- 
times I think you’re an atheist. ‘Then I see you 
lead the boys in the Lord’s prayer at council-fire. 
You mark up those Nychee books as though they 
was gospel; but then you tell Nat to live by the 
golden rule and he comes exploding to me about 
both the Bible and Nychee. You don’t go to church, 
but you know more about the Bible than the preach- 
ers, I'll bet. You’ve got a book about a Catholic 
Saint on the mantelpiece and, have made Aggie 
think that this Saint Francis was some ball of fire. 
What are you, anyway? I don’t get you.” Thus 
Heth, who browsed among my books, but seldom, 
if ever, read one through. 

I listened to the lad a bit wistfully, I guess, and 
a ttine perplexed’ of (spirits) Perhapsiayt teacher 
should wear a definite label. Perhaps he should 
have a definitive, understandable religious platform 
from which to speak to these boys who like to 
pigeonhole their fellows and their elders, and to 
recognize them as Protestant, Catholic, Democrat, 


280 OH aRs Avis’ B'O'Y 


Republican, Deist or Atheist, or, woe upon them, 
Socialist. It was apparent that I seemed to Heth, 
vigorous, practical mortal that he was, as a bit 
cloudy and disembodied and without foundation. I 
recall feeling this way toward Stanley Hall, whom 
I was never able to brand as Platonist, or Pragma- 
tist, or Hegelian, or Pagan, or Unitarian or any- 
thing save supremely Hallian. So, pawing around 
in my imagination for a tag, I finally replied: Well, 
Heth, I guess I’m a geneticist!” To which my stal- 
wart sailor-lad: “And what the devil is that?” [ 
pointed to five huge red volumes on my shelf. 
‘Read those, Heth, and maybe you'll discover what 
I mean.” He read the titles, weighed one of the 
books on the palm of his broad hand, and exclaimed: 
“My God!” 

A friend sent me a modern prayer-book ‘‘for use 
with the boys, in place of the older texts.” It was 
made up of talk about the effectiveness of prayer, and 
quotations from ancient and modern theologues who 
had said reasonably short prayers to Deity. There 
was a quaint monotony about it, rather pleasant for a 
time; but one thinks with deep sympathy of a God 
who would really have to listen to its contents, end- 
lessly repeated by a host of souls. On the whole it 
read very stupidly. I knew how my boys would re- 
act. hey did not have a chance. Not even Agpa- 
wan saw it. Agpawan delighted in some of the 
metered prayers of the Bible, and never tired of 
Fiona’s rune beginning: 


ie een EAT BOY 281 


‘“O spirit that broods upon the hills 


And moves upon the face of the deep 
And is heard in the wind.” 


But the practicalisms of pulpiteers, gathered into a 
prosy anthology with notes, interpolations, and tor- 
tuous explanations are beyond the boundaries of any- 
thing squaring with the mind of Boy! 


pc nietamsaidu lec, haveryouna prayer. could 
learn, so I could say it on occasion? ‘Times crop 
up when one ought to know a good prayer, and I 
haven’t been able to find anything that sounded as 
though I could feel it.’’ I reached to my ever re- 
sponsive shelf, and handed him an opened copy of 


eles), 


‘Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. 
The day returns and brings us the petty round of 
irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the 
man. Help us to perform them with laughter and 
kind faces. Let cheerfulness abound with industry. 
Give us to awake with smiles, give us to labor 
smiling. Let us lie down without fear and awake 
and rise with exultation.”’ 


Luther Gulick came to my aid with these boys in 
their desire to know what the word God meant. He 
presents, in his little ‘Dynamic of Manhood,”’ the 
idea of a discipline, of a real striving, of a detailed, 
systematic approach to the problem. However 
short he may fall of leading us to God; yet at least 


282 EE A GB Ow. 


he proposes a way of action, and not of mere 
reverie or meditation. 


“Most of what we know about God as Father 
and Friend comes to us through the life and charac- 
ter of Christ. That is, God has shown Himself 
most clearly in the person of Christ. He has in- 
fluenced the course of history more than any other 
person, and is the greatest personality of history. 
God shows himself through personality. 

“Exercise your friendship capacity by selecting 
some person to whom you wish to be closer—your 
mother, for example. Think through your relations 
with her. How long since you last wrote to her? 
Do you think about her affairs and interests, and 
ask her how definite matters are getting on? Did 
you ever think of sending some special thing—book 
—flowers—to her on the day when, with pain and 
with deep love, she brought you into the world? In 
general, what can you do to deepen and to increase 
the vividness and the reality of your relation to 
your mother. . . . You will find that a few minutes 
of this kind at the beginning of each day will help 
create an atmosphere of friendliness and warmth 
about you, an assurance of happiness ready to make 
its way into consciousness at any moment. 

‘The point is this, that we grow in those direc- 
tions in which we think and act. God is to be known 
in direct proportion as the power to love and under- 
stand love grows, hence deliberately plan and think 
these things through. . . . Plan your day in ac- 
cordance with the best that you know in all re- 
SHectsiie a 


He follows with several vibrant pages of prac- 


HER ALL BOY 283 


tical suggestions, which, if my lads were actually 
to follow, they would get a feeling of an approach 
to something desirable and satisfying, even though 
they failed to interpret this something mystically or 
theologically, as might Polixander or Agpawan. 
God must have been keenly amused one day if he 
looked in, as I did, upon the spectacular and graphic 
argument between Nat and Dole. They fought over 
the absoluteness of right and wrong. Down the 
middle of Nat’s cabin ran a crack. On one side 
there was a pine-knot, and across it, on the other, a 
splotch of blue ink. The boys squatted by these land- 
marks, Dole most philosophically calm, Nat dynam- 
ically vibrant with partisan emotion. He held 
Dole’s blackened briar pipe above the crack, a tem- 
porary symbol for God. | 
Good-natured hells and damns were flung across 
the separating space. Such a torrent of argument, 
such flow of invective, derision, expository defini- 
tion, pleading, tacking, scouting, debouching, en- 
flading and scattered maneuvering of mental 
forces I have seldom witnessed. [ seemed carried 
bodily back into the scholastic times of the early 
Christian philosophers. Finally they arrived at a 
breathless compromise, as I remember it, about like 
this: ‘“‘There is an absolute standard of right and 
wrong . . . we don’t know what this standard is 
. each must build his own standard and take his 
chance on its being in accord with the absolute 


284 THE RIAL BO Y 


standard which was made by God for purposes of 
his own.” 

The boys, when they at last noticed me in their 
doorway, were all for beginning the battle again, 
with myself as referee. I insisted that their com- 
promise sounded to me thoroughly pragmatic and 
practical, why waste more words? ‘They wanted a 
definition of pragmatism. I promised to give them 
one some day. For one morning, those two lads had 
philosophized enough ! 


Vv 


‘Who is Billy Sunday?” asked Frank, the inquisi- 
tive. 

I mounted my desk, took off my coat, rolled up 
my shirt-sleevs, gesticulated wildly and ‘shouted: 
“You little devils! Come out of that sink of 
iniquity! You mice! You rats! You skunks! If 
you don’t come out of there mighty sudden, you'll 
deserve all that’s coming to you in hell hereafter!” 

Mr. Brough, unaccustomed to hear my voice 
raised to such pitch and vehemence, came darting 
down the hall and looked into our classroom. I 
explained that I was describing Billy Sunday to the 
boys; but his lips curled in the wrong direction for a 
smile and he stamped back to his mathematics room. 

“But what good are such preachers, anyhow?” 
queried Tink, the sensitive, the esthete. ‘That 
stuff would get my goat. Say, why don’t churches 
pay taxes? Doesn't Billy Sunday have to pay a tax 


ep Rw A IB OY, 285 


same as a circus for his tents, or are his tents same 
as churches?” ‘The bell rang, and class closed on 
further radical questionings. 

Nat and Amo turned their small cabin into a pub- 
lic library, devoted mainly to books and magazines 
on how to get strong. Nat proselyted among the 
boys in behalf of what he called “the body beauti- 
Tulse eliseideay ot beauty) was ‘that, of a Sandow- 
but his attitude toward physical development was 
wholesome, and he had my blessing. He asked me 
if a few boys might drop in for a few minutes after 
taps for a final word or two before going to bed. A 
strange request, but I granted it. One night I 
dropped in to see what happened. ‘There, by the 
light of a tall, sputtery candle, Parson Alfalfa was 
reading from the Bible to half a dozen kids in 
pajamas and bathrobes. As I entered he was dron- 
ing along: “But he said unto me, Behold, thou shalt 
conceive, and bear a son; and he shall drink no wine 
nor strong drink, neither eat any unclean thing: for 
the child shall be called a Nazarite to God from the 
womb to the day of his death.”” The Parson looked 
up, smiled at me, and continued reading. “Then 
Manoah entreated the Lord, and said. . .” etc. 
At the end of the chapter he closed the book, 
knelt down and, the boys following him in approxi- 
mate unison, repeated the Lord’s prayer. ‘Then, 
with a quiet good-night to Nat and Amo and myself, 
the boys filed off to their cabins. I followed them 
into the crisp black night, feeling it hardly oppor- 


286 PoE REAL BOY 


tune to ask, just then, what this curious performance 
signified. 

‘Nat, why did you start a Bible class down 
there?” I asked, after council-fire one evening. 

“Well, Chief, Brown came to school and im- 
mediately got the name Parson Alfalfa. He 
wouldn’t play games on Sunday. MHe’d sneak off 
and read the Bible. Mooned around all day. I 
just hated him. Wondered whether to knock all 
that out of him, or whether we’d better do some- 
thing with his stuff. Amo suggested harnessing the 
guy to our library and starting a Bible class. The 
kids want that sort of thing, some of ’em. Seem to 
enjoy it. So I started him on Samson. ‘That’s a 
good strong-man story and it went over all right. 
Now some of the kids, at least, like the Parson and 
he isn’t so lonesome.”’ 

I marveled at my pagan Nat, and felt Amo’s 
quiet, somewhat mystical influence back of the per- 
formance. The nightly reading together might 
grow to be a happy custom for a few of the boys 
and I wished it well. 

Parson Alfalfa fared less happily at the hands of 
Parsons, Hirsch & Co., than with Nat and Amo. 
Hearing of the Bible class, these cynics invited Al- 
falfa to their den and asked him to start another 
class. ‘Then, like the mischievous Virginian of Owen 
Wister’s tale, they heckled him with questions 
which he answered in all solemnity until, their 
patience shredded by his dogged persistence and de- 


peli etre ha hy Are 9S Ory 287 


votion to truth, they razzed him unmercifully and 
pitched him out into the rainy night. 


VI 


“Tf the stars should appear one night in a thou- 
sand years, how would men believe and adore and 
preserve for many generations the remembrance of 
the city of God which had been shown?” ‘This ques- 
tion from Emerson fell on all too practical ears 
when I suggested a starlight walk for my small tikes 
of English I. 

‘But we know it isn’t the City of God, or any 
other city,’ piped up Belshe. “And we know the 
moon’s nothing but a dead world, all cold and no- 
body living on it. The moon’s good for something 
because you can see by it; but the stars don’t give 
enough light for you to see your way around; they’re 
just pretty sometimes, but I don’t see that they 
count for very much to us.” 

The night before Amo had pointed out Spika, 
Sagittarius, the Northern Cross and the Eagle to me. 
I had gone up to class full of enthusiasm for stars 
and looked forward to a night session with some of 
the boys out under the wheeling constellations. 
Belshe’s cold practicality dampened my spirits and I 
could not muster enough courage to quote Bourdil- 
lon’s exquisite lines about “The night has a thou- 
sand eyes, the day but one,’ which were ready to 
bubble over before that young materialist spoke his 
mind. 


288 PREv RAL BOY 


I dropped stars, and took to spelling from Cody’s 
‘One Hundred Percent Speller,’’ merely suggesting 
that if any boy wished to walk with me by starlight 
that evening, I would be at home right after study- 
hour. 

Frank appeared, of course, and Hawkins, Necker 
and Don Castillo. We walked in the woods, for I 
prefer a few stars at a time, through the branches 
of trees, to the whole mob of the heavens at once. 
We built a tiny fire, just bright enough to throw 
stray shadows here and there among the tree-trunks 
and float smoke wraiths up among the leaves. Lying 
down, face upward toward the holes in the roof of 
the woods we caught a sprinkle of starshine here 
and there and chatted a bit concerning time and 
space and light. 

But I had no heart for astronomy or constella- 
tions or the names of stars or planets. That seemed 
too practical, too like my small imp Belshe; so we 
just enjoyed an hour of lying by a little fire, upon 
dry leaves, and looking up at an occasional twinkle 
from ‘‘heaven.”’ 

To stay up all night should be an adventure for 
every boy at school. To hear the woods awaken at 
the faint gray birth of dawn is alone an experience 
he will always remember with joy. Bird-song before 
sunrise, and the soft slow looming of tree-trunks out 
of the night and into the misty half-light of earliest 
morning become precious treasures of the soul. 

One should watch a little fire through the night 


Tere eR ATSB Ony 289 


with a friend, in alternate periods of drowsy silence 
and of quiet talk; but he should also walk out the 
night alone by himself, listening to the tiny voices 
of a myriad animate things, and to that “‘little noise- 
less noise among the leaves, born of the very sigh 
that silence heaves.” 

Not only is our daily life so noisy and fretful and 
full of light and color that we really need a contrast 
in change to keep our balance right; but there is, it 
seems to me, a genuinely primitive, if not a spiritual 
touch upon one’s soul at the hands of Whitman’s 
enfolding night. For can we not, we sophists of the 
age of Bergson and Loeb and Karl Pearson, can we 
not yet hold that: 


‘The Soul is also real—it too is positive and 
direct; 
No reasoning, no proof has establish’d it, 
Undeniable growth has establish’d it.” 


Let us believe it, for boys, at least! Let us give 
our boys those things, those circumstances that work 
into their undeniable growth of body and mind that 
subtle something which no reasoning or proof has 
established, but which all of us at some time have 
felt; even as when: 

“The press of my foot to the earth springs a hun- 
dred affections.’’ For every boy is a poet at heart, 
however much he may hate Milton or be bored with 
Goldsmith or balk at Wordsworth. I believe my 
lads who have experienced night right through from 


290 ani OO RIEVATS, OB @oy 


sundown to homeward walk in dawnlight, have felt 
as our good gray poet did when he said: 


‘‘T think heroic deeds were all conceived in the open 
air, and all great poems, also; 
I think I could stop, here myself, and do miracles.” 


After all, it is feeling first which makes us poets. 
The words may follow and we may write them, or 
they may not and we may be still; but we have all 
at least lived a bit of poetry, whether written after- 
ward or vanished on the air. 

The boys liked to have me drop around to their 
cabins after taps for a word of good-night. It some- 
times seemed the golden hour of all the day to me, 
a time when one could, in the fewest spoken words, 
build up his structure of friendliness between boy 
and man. Stepping up to Ed and Simon’s door one 
evening I overheard the most picturesque bit of 
proselyting that has ever reached my ears. Said the 
diminutive Simon: 

“T know I’m a Jew by race, but I’ve turned Chris- 
tian by religion. I don’t feel ashamed. I feel as 
though I’d seen a light in a dark place. I want you 
to see it too. It’s very good to be a Christian in the 
truth of it, not just by name.” 

“But isn’t your old religion just as good?” re- 
turned the somewhat sleepy Ed. ‘“Wasn’t Jesus a 
Jew? Why can’t you stay Jew and still be a Chris- 
tian if Jesus was a Jew? Anyhow, I don’t like 
churches.”’ 


MPH RIECALL | sBiOW) 291 


“Sure Jesus was a Jew, but he taught a new re- 
ligion, a better one than they had. I’ve been con- 
verted, and I’m going to join the Christian church. 
I'll do it at Christmas time. I wish you would too. 
Won’t you?” 

“Can it, old man, until some other time. I don’t 
see how you get that way. I’m sleepy. Good- 
night.” 

Had the eternal spirit of missionary and martyr 
reincarnated itself in this mite of a lad? How long 
would this fervor last? Howcame it about? What 
strange things were going on inside these curly 
heads, whose insides we teacher folk so very seldom 
see | 

As a teacher in a non-sectarian school, it was not 
my province to deal with religious doctrine. Adoles- 
cence is so strongly religious at heart, however, 
that, as we have seen, questions of religion and the- 
ology cropped up quite often in class and out. For 
the churches in our neighborhood I had as little lik- 
ing as the boys. ‘Their nominal Christianity was 
static, moldy, unwholesome. Our Sunday services 
at school were innocuous, and their tedium was re- 
lieved by the fact that we all appeared in starched 
collars and shiny shoes and took on a demeanor of 
solemnity which was partly real. Morning prayers 
in the gymnasium were livened with song, although 
our singing was often followed by a somewhat scoldy 
preachment in community ethics, especially in the 
wake of some boyish escapade. On the whole I be- 


292 HSE RE ALL BOY 


lieve the religious life of Intervale as a group of 
men and boys was rather barren and _ neglected. 
When the boys did ask for the bread of a way of 
life, they were handed the cobblestones of formal 
dogma. How true it is, so many times, as Havelock 
Ellis has put it that: 


‘When the impulse of religion first germinates in 
the young soul, the ghouls of the churches rush out 
of their caverns, seize on the unhappy victim of the 
divine influence and proceed to assure him that his 
rapture is, not a natural manifestation as free as the 
sunlight and as gracious as the unfolding of a rose, 
but the manifest sign that he has been branded by a 
supernatural force and fettered forever to a dead 
theological creed. ‘Too often he is thus caught by 
the bait of his own rapture; the hook is firmly fixed 
in his jaw and he is drawn whither his blind guides 
will; his wings droop and fall away; so far as the 
finer issues of life are concerned, he is done for and 
damned.” 


Yet what could I do? Had I myself anything 
happier to offer? What was my gospel, my religion? 
Always when questioning myself thus, I was led to 
think of the woods, of my walks under the trees with 
the boys, of our friendship fires at night in the 
open, and of Kitty’s hearthside indoors. ‘These 
were symbols of my own religion, if indeed I had 
one. It would not formulate itself into a creed. It 
seemed to avoid words and seek a refuge in such 
things as were dearest to my heart. Firelight or 


ire HATER Ory 293 


candle-light, the reading of good books together, 
listening to Bach’s concerto for two violins or Bee- 
thoven’s funeral march, or wisps from MacDowell. 
Friendly chats, accented by periods of silence, con- 
templating emberglow. Doing primitive things to- 
gether with my fellows, felling trees, climbing rocks, 
cooking meals, sleeping under rain clouds or stars. 
Always when I puzzled over religion my thoughts 
harked to such things as these. So I contented my- 
self, at Intervale, with such fragments of relation- 
ship to my pupils as came to'us unbidden at rare 
times when circumstance and spirit opened the way. 
Around our council-fire during our summer session, 
a religious spirit seemed to come and dwell in our 
midst which was more general, more formal and 
yet still plastic, alive and, I hope, evergreen and 
growing. 

Let us return again, in Chapter XV, to the relig- 
ious spirit of the out-of-doors which has been lived 
and spoken of and written about by so many healthy 
souls. But first I would mention a short, incon- 
clusive experiment in teacherhood which bridged my 
life at Intervale across to that of summer camping. 


CHAPTER XIV 


A SHORT EXPERIMENT IN 
COORDINATION 


Education must become again in intention and spirit 
religious. The impulse of devotion, to universal 
service, and to a complete escape from self, will re- 
appear again, stripped and plain, as the recognized 
fundamental structural impulse in human society. 


—H.G. WELLs. 
I 


INTERVALE, a seedling school of tomorrow, was 
torn up by its young roots and hurled into the Gehen- 
na of our unreasoning war-mindedness. It could not 
survive the political, social and economic lynching of 
its founder, our beloved “‘Doc.”’ He was tramped 
on, as a stepping stone to power, by a notorious petty 
politician who failed to realize his ambition, thank 
the Lord, despite the huge publicity given him by his 
cowardly attack upon “Doc” as an agent of the 
Kaiser. We are all too drably familiar with the his- 
tory of such raids upon American citizens of Ger- 
man descent to call for more than a passing reference 
here. I need only say that the concrete foundation 
of our log Club-House at Intervale was celebrated 
by the press as a gun-emplacement for German artil- 
lery; beautiful German lithographs of wheat-fields, 

294 


GNSS hie DA baal i Oba 295 


oaks in the Black Forest and ancient castles on the 
Rhine upon our corridor walls were labeled as in- 
struments for the Prussianization of American 
Youth; and I myself was branded by gossip as a 
traitor attempting to slide into the army as a spy. 
One may smile at these things now; but they were 
not without some elements of tragedy at the time. 
We teachers scattered and became realtors, auto- 
mobile agents or mere teachers again in other 
schools. I returned to journalism, but grew so home- 
sick for howling youngsters and a wood-pile that 
when Mr. Cogan called upon me and described a 
marvelous “school of tomorrow” of which I might 
become Head-Master,” I deserted my typewriter and 
took up my second experiment in teacherhood. 
Westbrook was a tiny private school, set pic- 
turesquely on a hillside in Connecticut, where about 
twenty boys ranging in age from ten to seventeen 
were gathered together under one roof. For a short 
time a group of three men and three women worked 
there amidst that handful of boys as doers and learn- 
ersvasmwelleas in the role,oL) teacher.) |Hor antew 
months the varied phases of a school curriculum were 
melted into a single major theme with a definite and 
common aim and method. The day’s physical labor 
in necessary chores was done rapidly, but thoroughly, 
in a spirit of willing codperation. Physical training, 
outside of athletics, was centered in the dance. Eve- 
nings went to firelight stories, music and tramps or 
snow-ball battles in the open air. On the whole we 


296 PHE REAL BOY 


lived for a season close to the spirit of Stevenson’s 
prayers 


‘When the day returns, return to us, our sun and 
comforter, and call us up with morning faces and 
with morning hearts, eager to labor, eager to be 


happy.” 


My first act upon arriving at Westbrook was to 
clear out every desk and drawer and shelf of all 
text-books. Nothing remained with the boys save 
pencil, paper, pen and ink. ‘Then I furnished each 
with a large, loose-leaf note-book. On my desk in 
our assembly room I placed the first volume of Wells’ 
“Outline of History.’ On our shelves were put 
some dictionaries, an encyclopedia, a World AIl- 
manac and a Bible. 

The boys were divided roughly into two sections, 
older and younger, in accord with physiological and 
mental age as nearly as I could judge it without 
elaborate tests. [hese groups met me in turn, then 
went to one or other of three teachers who followed 
my lead in adventuring with the boys among events 
of the past, of today, and of tomorrow. 

The last sentence in paragraph three of volume 
one in our only text-book reads (of the sun): “Its 
bulk is a million and a quarter times that of the 
earth.’’ This brought my first question from the 
boys: ‘‘How much is the bulk of the earth?” I asked 
if anyone knew. No one did. I asked if it would 
be of interest to find out. Unanimous agreement. 


patie geh hA EB OY: 297 


Closing the book, and stepping to the blackboard, 
we entered first plane and then solid geometry. One 
by one I set down the simple arithmetic rules for 
finding the diameter, circumference and area of a 
circle, and then of a sphere with a closing formula 
as to its bulk or cubic contents. “These went down 
into our loose-leaf note-books. Miss Martin and I 
would now be available to any boy who needed help 
in learning how to find the contents of a sphere, or 
the bulk of our world. I thought I had made a fine 
beginning in codrdinated studies, History and Math 
ematics ! | 

Of course the need for variety of interest was 
felt very soon; but Wells afforded it in plenty. On 
page four we found, next day, that: ‘‘So hot is the 
sun’s atmosphere that iron, nickel, copper, and tin 
are present in it in a gaseous state.”’ To which 
Billy Fellows: ‘‘How can anybody know that? No 
body’s ever been there to find out! He’d be burned 
up alive.” So Billy was appointed to write us a 
brief description, and draw a sketch of the spectro- 
_ scope, which he would find in the encyclopedia, and 
tell us how man can discover what chemical elements 
are present in stars and suns. “But why should a 
spectroscope go into a history book?” He inquired. 
I explained that we were building history in loose- 
leaf form, so that when we came to the time when 
man discovered the spectroscope, we might then slip 
sketch and description into its proper place. ‘Gosh, 
it'll be an awful long time before we get filled up - 


298 He Bea eee (Tei) ae 


that far, won't it?’ We agreed that it might take 
long. And so we read on together through pleasant 
days of very real work upon such high-lights in our 
text as I chose to single out for special effort. We 
tacked into botany, physiology, elemental chemis- 
try, physics and even fragmentary Latin, as well as 
dwelling daily in the land of mathematics, good 
English, spelling and drawing. The codperation of 
my colleagues was sympathetic and complete, parents 
seemed happily content, and the boys had sometimes 
to be driven out to recess from their note-books. Re- 
cess brought us together in hard play, and our after- 
noons were devoted mainly to outdoor or manual 
jobs. When evening came, we were quite ready for 
stories and music by the open fire, with pop-corn or 
candy-pull for spice. 

The younger boys followed the same plan, save 
that their mathematics, for instance, dealt in much 
smaller integers when measuring surfaces and con- 
tents. It was my personal job as a teacher to sim- 
plify general principles so that all could follow. 
This was fascinating work, and kept me mentally 
alive. Outside my group periods, I wandered among 
the boys, lending a hand here and there with their 
work, especially in drawing and trying my best to 
work upon the principle of the stimulus of success; 
finding merit and things worthy of compliment, and 
dealing with error only afterward, as though of but 
little importance. 

For I had the awful memory of a salesman’s visit 


re REA BO x 299 


to Intervale. He set up a magic-lantern in my class- 
room. He threw huge enlargements of boy compo- 
sitions upon a screen. Every error, duly scored in 
red, stood out vividly with the effect of spilled blood. 
As a visual emphasizer of mistakes this engine was 
a masterpiece. Its principle was that of the musical 
neophyte who had studied so closely the errors and 
faults in musical compositions that he could detect 
them whenever they occurred. A delightful way to 
listen to a symphony or opera! ‘The salesman as- 
sured me that his instrument was being adopted by 
the leading progressive schools, and was truly a part. 
of the equipment of the schools of tomorrow. To 
which I replied that I preferred premature interment 
to having to adopt either such an appliance or such a 
method of instruction. It does seem to me that here, 
if anywhere, the school of tomorrow is to differ from 
those of the past and of today; that we shall deal 
more and more with trial and success, and less and 
less with mere trial and error. 

At Westbrook we often varied our classroom 
work to embrace lessons out of doors, as when Obrey 
found a long, tough grape vine hanging from an oak 
and we spent two whole days as Indians chasing 
Daniel Boone. That story, too, was recorded in our 
note-books, awaiting its proper setting in time and 
place. But it was its action that remained with us, 
and will remain, a vital memory. One of the boys 
chopped off that grape vine near its base and it made 
a marvelous swing! Not until every one of us had 


300 AHeE VREAIL VB OvyY 


been Daniel and all the rest of us his pursuing ene- 
mies were we content to come back inside four walls, 
and next day there was nothing to do but repeat 
the play for good measure. “Acting History” began 
to become a tradition, and it promised to compete 
keenly with our work upon the story of mankind. 

One day Donald sat on the topmost branch of a 
maple in our yard, declaiming Sam McGee. Willard 
shouted lines from Masefield in the basement. 
Buddy howled up attic, and, behind the doors of 
my own large room, small Joseph struggled with the 
clear diction of the Gettysburg Address. A group 
of boys sat with me, listening to Bob kill the High- 
wayman from Alfred Noyes. Aubrey wandered 
lonely as a cloud on the brown fields behind our 
school home reciting lines from Kipling. A few 
youngsters sang with Mademoiselle about the piano. 
Thus was Westbrook school in session one day when 
inquisitive visitors arrived, prepared by hearsay to 
find us each and all bent over loose-leaf note-books 
drawing historical maps. It had so happened that 
we had voted a declamation contest, and each boy 
had chosen his part, not necessarily historical, but 
still to fit our bulging history books now merrily in 
the building. I had no thought of shifting our pro- 
cedure for the accommodation of guests. They 
could take what they. found as it was. 


II 
After lunch, we cleared table, helped wash dishes, 


THE REAL BOY 301 


swept rooms and halls and classrooms, dusted out 
erasers, washed boards, emptied waste-baskets, 
sharpened pencils for the morrow, washed floors and 
windows when they needed it and, in general, made 
things tidy for the community. Many hands made 
light work. Then we sawed wood by shifts, and 
played. During snow-time we skated, tobogganed, 
sledded, snow-shoed, skied, built forts, fought bat- 
tles and enjoyed old-time Intervale snow-baths be- 
hind the school by moonlight. Before supper we 
spent an hour in study, that is in reading, or drawing, 
or working our individual problems for tomorrow. 
All ran smoothly until Springtime. 

The fragrance of fresh sod, mingling with a 
faintest suggestion of the odor of apple-bloom-to- 
come wafted through the windows of our school- 
home on the hill one April morning and settled in 
our hearts. I closed our “Outline of History,” whis- 
pered a few electric words in the ear of our long- 
legged Aubrey, who shot out through the doorway 
as though he had been flung from a catapult. Soon 
he was back with a message from our cook, and pre- 
sently all of us, teachers and pupils and scurrying 
dogs were off down the pike with springing step and 
with laughter on our faces, echoing an April song of 
freedom in our hearts. 

How we spent that first sunshiny day of Spring- 
time is of no moment here. Anyone can picture a 
score of wild boys turned loose from however so 
pleasant a series of walls and doors and windows, 


302 THE* REAL BOY 


enclosing them for a week or so of cloudy drizzle, 
out into warm sunlight and a balmy southern breeze. 
Perhaps anyone can imagine, also, the look of aston- 
ishment and no little chagrin on the face of the proud 
owner of that pioneer school when he returned, that 
morning, with some important visitors, and found 
his school had vanished completely, leaving nothing 
but furniture and fixtures to suggest its one-time 
existence. 

All the way from New York on the train these 
visitors had been told in glowing terms of the unique 
educational plan under which the Westbrook boys 
were living and learning to live. Grim silence and 
desertion met and abode with them until time for 
their departure. The smiling colored cock, when 
questioned, could only reply: “Lawdy, Mr. Cogan, 
how’s I goin’ to know where they be? Just skipt 
off and went, with all the bread and butter and cocoa 
and milk in ma kitchen. Not a word where, or when 
they'd be comin’ back. Just plumb skidoo, and me 
here to hold de fort ’til they gets back.” 

When we returned Mr. Cogan spoke. Such a 
spontaneous variation of program must not occur 
again. ‘To this I could not commit myself, for the 
Good Lord might send another such day as this all 
unawares, and how could I tell how our hearts might 
respond to its call? Were we not working under 
the principle of freedom to grow as the spirit might 
move? Sorry I was for what had come to pass, but 
when the Red Gods made their medicine, the young 


GH Selb Ai) BOG 303 


men’s feet would turn. I had accepted an offer of 
complete academic freedom very literally, and upon 
my own interpretation of its spirit. 

Meanwhile, interest in our loose-leaf story of man- 
kind kept warm and flared now and then into real 
flames by way of its perpetual variety, its adapta- 
bility to mood and its constant appeal to action, espe- 
cially in drawing. Figures from problems in plane 
and solid geometry (which we called arithmetic), 
diagrams of astronomic distances and geological 
strata, all in three or four colors of ink appealed to 
almost every boy, mechanically minded as most boys: 
are. Pictures of cotylosaurs, pterodactyls, bronto- 
sauri, Heidelberg men, Neanderthal skulls, and 
stone age weapons we copied from Horrabin’s draw- 
ings, or from such books and magazines as were at 
hand. When an embryo cartoonist wished Cro- 
Magnon men to shoot archzopterix with machine- 
guns, I was glad to welcome his caricatures into our 
text. Boy geologists reconstructed the most amazing 
of impossible creatures from stray bones found in 
the diggings of their fertile imagination. We played 
utter havoc with fact, and yet our very grotesqueries 
helped fix the major truths of our studies the firmer 
in mind. 

So at Westbrook we studied grammar, composi- 
tion, penmanship, spelling and drawing without 
knowing that we were studying. The first drafts for 
the histories were done in pencil for correction, and 
only the final copy, in ink, was included in the 


304. dy, BEES UR BATS BOTY 


record. Some of the boys kept their rough sketches 
as museum samples of what a lot of work went into 
making a perfect sheet. Not only did we cover sub- 
jects usually compartmented into separate classes. or 
courses; but we forgot there were such formal 
methods while we lost ourselves trying to do one all 
absorbing thing. On the inside covers of our his- 
tories we pasted that dedication of a book in Gaelic 
by a monk of the Twelfth Century: 


“Neither for gold nor for gifts did I undertake 
this work so great and difficult—only I prayed that 
my book might be beautiful.” 


My enthusiasm for the “Story of Mankind,” how- 
ever, so eclipsed the necessary emphasis upon college 
requirements that parents began to inquire as to how 
we were preparing the boys for entrance examina- 
tions. I trusted that we should learn enough, in our 
work as it was, to carry through; but I could give 
no formal guarantee. Parents were delighted with 
the progress of the note-book histories and with the 
health and happiness of the boys, but: “Will Tom 
get into Yale? Will William be ready for Prince- 
ton? Can his note-book carry Henry into Cornell ?” 
What could I say? Regretfully, therefore, I ten- 
dered my resignation as Head-Master in favor of 
someone who cared more for fitting boys for college 
than indulging a fascinating experiment in education. 
I felt no bitterness in this. “he world is constructed 
thus. My method was too radical, too premature. 


Tie Ee Aer ts Gaye 305 


Il 


Nat Warren had come to me at Westbrook. 
Bolted away from college, tired of its compart- 
mented courses, circumambient lectures, fraternities 
and jazz. He wanted action; clamored for a job. 
Still Nietzschean, he came to us full of enthusiasm 
for hard muscles and tense nerves. ‘Only the 
noblest things are very hard. ‘This new command, O 
my brothers, I lay upon you—become hard!’ Those 
words seemed to have become his motto. I talked 
over with him Nietzche’s ideal of the Dancer,. 
“strong, vigorous, yet harmonious and well bal- 
anced.’ I proposed that he join Miss Esther in 
eurythmics with our boys. He shied at the word 
eurythmics, but he took me seriously when I pre- 
sented to him the spirit of the dance as Havelock 
Ellis has phrased it: ‘“The dance of the athlete and 
acrobat rather than the make-believe of the ball- 
room, for behind the easy equipoise of such dancing 
lie patient training and effort. The chief character 
of good dancing is its union of the maximum of well 
balanced grace; that the whole muscular system is 
alive to restrain any excess; so that however wild 
and free the movement may seem it is always mea- 
sured. Excess would mean ignominious collapse.”’ 

So we introduced dancing at Westbrook with all 
the hope and enthusiasm of Greeks in the time of 
Pericles. Fortunately Miss Esther was a young 
woman who incarnated the very spirit of ‘‘the land 


306 THE REAL “BOY 


of happy dancing’ and who threw herself into our 
plan for athletics to music with such sympathetic 
energy that even our most prosaic boys were soon 
caught all unawares in the subtle and magnetic 
poetry of motion. 

Heretofore the boys had gone through, every 
morning, the dreary, mechanical, jerky, jumpy, angu- 
lar process called ‘‘setting up.” This standardized 
set of motions to the snappy rhythrn of counted num- 
bers doubtless has its place in the absence of any- 
thing better; but how sorrily far removed from 
Plato’s idea of the muscular training of youth! You 
recall his words: “Rhythm and harmony are made 
familiar to the souls of youth, that they may grow 
more graceful and harmonious, and so be of service 
both in words and deeds; for the whole life of man 
stands in need of grace and harmony.” Is it simply 
because the intensive training of the dance is so 
much more difficult that we side-step its discipline 
and resort to a poor substitute? Or is it American 
hurry that dictates a cutting short of time for the 
attainment of results? ‘Ted Shawn’s experience in 
the army certainly proved to our physical-training 
experts that the discipline of the dance is more in- 
tensively vigorous than the hardest work at “‘setting 
up.’ Sheer lack of time, of course, was dead against 
the adoption of dance training as a physical measure 
for military ends. However, we at Westbrook had 
time for the added effort that must go into the mak- 
ing of a good dancer. 


Perini Rot Aslan Oey 307 


Awkward myself to the point of grotesqueness, 
unable so much as to dance the one-step without vio- 
lence to other toes than mine; yet I thrilled, as 
though by Freudian over-reaction against my own 
inferiority complex in this regard, to the idea of 
training our boys in the rudiments of genuine danc- 
ing. For, if J had not experienced, at least I had 
seen the results of such foundation-laying, even as 
Miss Hinman has stated them: “Concentration of 
attention, gained by necessity for quick grasp of 
direction; alertness, necessary for application of 
direction; excellent codrdination of mental and phy- 
sical powers; grace and harmony through increas- 
ingly better control of muscle and nerve; better pos- 
ture; and doubtless better health through the effect 
upon respiration, circulation and general exhilaration 
of bodily and mental tone.’ So that, with Nat and 
Miss Esther, I felt my appointed mission to our 
youngsters was equipped admirably toward its goal 
and, with vivacious music from our piano at hands 
of one who could at least give us the full rhythm of 
good music, Westbrook took on an aspect of the 
Greek schole which rejoiced my soul. 


IV 


There was nothing pretty or dainty or even con- 
spicuously delicate about our dancing at Westbrook. 
For seven years Miss Esther had kept herself under 
a regular, daily discipline of joyous but hard physical 
work. The things her body did in response to music 


308 UAE Ra B'O¥ 


looked so flowingly facile that they brought a first 
wave of easy tolerance over the minds of the boys 
who watched. Then they tried to do those simple, 
easy things and found them utterly impossible to do. 
The same was true with Nat’s various athletic stunts, 
except that the stunts were much more quickly mas- 
tered than the finely controlled movements of the 
dance. Once the dance was brought home to the 
boys as a superlative athletic achievement, they were 
keen for its preliminary discipline. The music 
helped, of course, for we are all muscularly musical 
creatures and mere exposure to the simplest tom-tom 
rhythm will awaken the instinct to dance. 

I took small groups of our boys to watch Esther 
at work. Her teacher was a musician and painter of 
landscapes, real and imaginary, and a marvelous in- 
terpreter of the human figure in strenuous action. 
Her studio shone with quick, vivid pastels of her 
pupil, crystallized in mid-air, or prone on the solid 
earth as the music might have swept her when the 
deft hand of the artist caught the mood in colored 
line. Trees, also, and hills, marshland and stretch- 
ing field, river and brook and wisps of sky-blue lake 
seemed to extend the limits of the room as though 
by magic into a far reaching panorama of the great 
out-of-doors. And here the two women worked to- 
gether, while at times the boys sat watching. 

The teacher as doer and as learner was apparent 
here. The boys caught the spirit in their teacher, 
one who learned while she taught, who worked hard 


Abdel iDs ANID P OU bya AsO IN ¢ 309 


toward her own perfection while she called for rigor- 
ous labor on the part of her pupils. Nat also became 
a learner, and a new world was opened to him into 
which he plunged with enthusiasm, and from whence 
he radiated his own joy of accomplishment... It was 
these qualities in teacherhood that made the dance 
grip our boys as it did. At first it was a mere wel- 
come graduation from the routine of setting-up drill. 
Slowly it became a real interest, and, at least for 
some of the lads, a real joy. 


V 


Our music was mostly catchy rhythms or melodies 
from MacDowell, the waltzes of Brahms, old bal- 
lads like Duke Marlboro and the folk-dance fa- 
vorites from Miss Burchenal’s collection. 

As for jazz, the records which I hid away were 
never called for. They were forgotten. Had the 
boys demanded them, I would have brought them 
forth, if only for contrast. Our school piano was 
devoted to music. We trusted that the boys would 
absorb all the marvelous modernities of jazz in due 
course without our help. They doubtless did or will 
in college, where, when last I visited frat-house and 
dormitory the favorite song was one entitled ‘Red 
Hot Mama” which I heard a mob of sophomores 
sing through at least a score of times beside a rock- 
ing piano before it switched into “If he do do two 
time one time, he won’t do one time no more.”’ 


310 THE REAL BOY 


Now I do not believe that the sexual physiology, 
so obviously the ideational motive of such wide- 
spread phonograph songs as these and their like has 
any grave and lasting significance for our callowly 
sophisticated youth. ‘Those sophomores were not 
singing lessons in physiology, but they were shouting 
to a catchy, syncopated rhythm to which they could 
clap and stamp and twist their necks to soul’s con- 
tent, and with athletic vigor. I merely regret the 
pitifully narrow limits of our favorite rhythms, as 
those of the ballroom dance. 

I am not at all convinced that, as Stanley Hall has 
said, ‘‘there is a literature so bad that one had far 
better go through life illiterate than to read, and 
music so corrupting and neurotic that the densest 
ignorance of this great art is better than knowledge 
or acquaintance with it.”” There may be worse music 
than that which we have canned from the effluvia of 
the “barbary coast” for our drawing-rooms and 
sorority dances; but I have never heard it. Yet I 
cannot believe that it viciously corrupts any but the 
organically corruptible. It makes its mark, yes. It 
lowers one’s sensitiveness, it reduces one’s apprecia- 
tive tone perhaps; and yet even at that, the mere fact 
that these rhythms are primitive, barbaric, if you 
please, and that we, as perpetual barbarians at heart 
respond so quickly to them, gives me food for 
thought. 

Aristotle’s theory of catharsis, perhaps the first 
formulated principle of the dawning science of psy~ 


TEA RG ANG mn b.@.Y) Sit 


chology, leads one to wonder where, in education, 
has barbaric music its place? Just as the drama may 
vicariate for our instinctive urge to cross swords and 
draw blood; just as the dance opens channels of ex- 
pression for a hundred pent up feelings. and emotions 
upon a vastly varying scale; may not even jazz hold 
cathartic, if not constructive values? 

I have watched a dining-room full of kids, be- 
witched with ragged syncopation of a cacophonous 
school orchestra. Waiters jigged down the aisles 
with their trays of rattling plates. Spoons and forks 
and knives tapped in time at every table. Biscuits 
and butter were passed in rhythmic rise and fall 
from boy to boy. My own fingers drummed on the 
table-cloth, and my feet beat time on the floor. 

Something was lacking, however. What we 
needed was to dance. All we could do was to move 
certain of our smaller muscles in time with a rhythm 
which called upon us to leap, whirl, run, kick, wave 
our arms and bend our bodies down and up and back 
and around. I remembered the name of the music 
which the orchestra murdered that day, and pur- 
chased its phonographic record later for an experi- 
ment. Gathering many of these same boys around a 
roaring fire, I set the music to blaring through a huge 
wooden horn. We were stark naked, after a swim 
in the lake. We were moved into action to keep 
warm. ‘The music set us first to keeping time with 
slaps and stamping, then with the beginnings of a 
war-dance around the fire. Bunglingly awkward, 


312 As Rab A 5 OY 


our muscles tried desperately to codrdinate them- 
selves, to follow the tingling musical desire of our 
starved nerves. ‘The performance was grotesque, 
but at last we were dancing, and the travesty upon 
music was redeemed by sublimation into muscular 
activity. 

I wondered at Westbrook if perhaps I did violence 
to savage boyhood by setting it to work upon 
rhythms and melodies too complex for their stage of 
ontogenic evolution. I was torn between the desire 
to acquaint these youngsters with the best music that 
I knew, and the tear lest I be committing as grave 
an educational error as I would were I to try to 
teach a child to read before it had learned to talk, 
or the notes of the scale before it could hum a tune. 
Could one, should one compromise between Mac- 
Dowell and Bert Williams? Between Beethoven 
and the nameless originator of the tango? 


VI 


We did not try to compromise at Westbrook. 
We remained devoted to good music. ‘The experi- 
ment was of too short a duration to warrant a con- 
clusion as to how nearly right we were. 

So, too, was our time too short to judge the result 
of our attempt at codrdinated studies. For with the 
coming of Spring and the approach of summer, it 
seemed best to turn the school back into the hands of 
Cogan, its owner, who would direct it more nearly in 
accord with accepted traditions of preparatory 


ARIE AIL) BO Y 313 


schools. College loomed ahead of the boys, and I 
too easily forgot this grim, hard fact! So Kitty 
packed our candlesticks, waffle iron and books, and 
we departed, not without regrets, toward yet another 
adventure in education. 


On the road we reviewed together our work with 
the boys and while we found that the histories had 
only progressed through the time of neolithic man 
in Europe, they had been the nucleus for such inten- 
sive, interested and fruitful effort that our experi- 
ment seemed successful in principle, at least. Fail 
though I did to carry it through, I still believe that 
this plan or others like it, would fill a crying need 
in the lives of boys between eleven and fifteen. They 
need a dominating major interest, a focal point, a 
philosophic theme if you please, around which to 
gather whatever fragments of knowledge such an 
interest will find. ‘This principle is already in prac- 
tice, as John Dewey and his daughter Evelyn have 
shown us, in many a progressive school. My only 
point here is that History seems to me the most cath- 
olic and embracing theme one can choose as a major 
for such a school curriculum. ‘The growth of the 
human mind in such an historical setting as, for in- 
stance, James Harvey Robinson has made for it, 
appeals to me as the most enlightening study to which 
our youth can devote its hours at school. 

Both the psychology we have learned to call Beha- 
viorism, and that which is known as Genetic become 


314 AS CRAB Os 


integral in such a study, but without their somewhat 
abstruse labels. Thus, I believe, a knowledge of self 
can be obtained with little danger of too much intro- 
spection, which even physiology is likely to bring on 
if it becomes a dominant interest. What we need to 
know about in this day of intricate social and inter- 
national relationships is the larger self, the self of 
humanity as a whole, instead of the individual alone. 
I would almost reverse the tenets of the psychoan- 
alyst, for boys and girls at least, and strive to lead 
them to see themselves reflected in the mirror of an 
anthropological history of mankind. Let it be for 
us, who are older, to turn to introspection and analy- 
sis. Youth is the time to get acquainted with one’s 
neighbor, and, as nearly as possible, to learn to love 
one’s neighbor as himself. 


CHAPTER XV 


THE WOOD SPIRIT CALLS US AWAY 


I will arise and go now, for always, night and day, 

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the 
shore; 

While I stand on the roadway or on the pavements 


gray, 
I hear it in the deep heart’s core. 


—W. B. YEATs. 


I 


CHARLES W. ELioT said that ‘‘the organized 
summer camp is America’s most significant contri- 
bution to the educational systems of the world.” 
Kitty and I decided to become a part of this contri- 
bution. We purchased an abandoned farm on the 
shore of a small lake in Maine and where only poor 
corn, scrub apples and granite bowlders had grown 
before, we tried to raise a crop of boys. 

The old farmhouse which for years had shel- 
tered tramps and porcupines and stray fishermen 
soon yielded to hammer, saw and nails and became a 
home where Kitty hung her Intervale copper by the 
fireplace, set up the candlesticks and ranged our 
books upon the mantel. 

Some of the Intervale boys came to us as Council- 

315 


316 TLHEWREAL “BOY 


ors, and found waffles and coffee on the hearthside 
as in days gone by. Nat Warren came, and Empty 
Dome; Burt and Bill Hales who, as tiny youngsters, 
had learned to swim with me in Silver Lake now 
came to teach watersports to tenderfoot campers. 
Amo, the astronomer’s son, brought us a telescope, 
promising star-lore. Llewellyn brought his story- 
teller’s pack and set of boxing-gloves. If Agpawan 
had only been with us an Intervale galaxy would 
have been complete. We set to work in all the spirit 
that must have animated the pioneer days of the old 
school, for there was much to do by way of clearing 
land and building shelter. “The sound of the ax, the 
spade, the brush-hook, saw and hammer filled the 
air by day, and at evening we listened to the crackle 
of birch-logs on the hearth. 

‘The barn, new shingled and refloored, reared its 
hand-hewn oak timbers above a square foundation 
of split stone. It housed our dining-room, kitchen, 
carpentry-shop, art-studio, library, office, store- 
rooms and play-lofts. Once harboring horses and 
cows and hay, and later moldering into typical 
abandoned wreckage, it now became a rainy-day 
paradise for howling youngsters. 

So here, on an open hillside sloping toward a sand- 
beach on the lake, bounded by a fire-wood jungle 
and a sweep of beautiful pines, I began yet an- 
other experiment in the art of teacherhood. Here, 
at last, I felt free of principals, faculty, directors, 
trustees, owners and college exams. With me were 


glee eA ib Guy, 17 


a handful of young men keen for hard work, re- 
sponsive to and patient with the errant whims of 
boyhood, loyal to the Camp idea and, withal, 
friendly toward one another. Let me say here, 
however, before speaking of the trials and joys of 
working with a council group, that we were far from 
free of strong differences of opinion, periodic 
clashes, and occasional fights to grim finish. I do 
believe, though, that even our hardest battles were 
animated on both sides by a conviction that we stood 
for the best interest of the boy or the group for 
which we fought. Our warfare was almost entirely 


on the field of education, and over ways and means 
of ‘doing the job for the kid.” 


II 


What was our camp idea? Again I confess to the 
purely personal. I looked out first into my 
groups of boys, resolved that they should get some- 
thing from camp that I had missed in my boyhood 
days. Where I had learned things wrong, or only 
half right, I intended that they should learn them 
in the very best way possible. JI wanted them to 
have the joy that comes of mastering the principles 
of a thing, whether it be mumbledepeg, swimming 
or modeling a bust. 

In Mexico I learned to swim by being pushed into 
a pool of muddy water. Surviving this initiation, I 
plunged in myself, and learned the stinging ‘‘belly- 
flop.” For years the dog-paddle and the wild splash 


318 Uy ab a RBA BOY: 


were my equivalents for swimming and diving. Our 
gang called it swimming if one kept his head above 
water, and going in head-first was a dive. Now God 
has put enough of the artist within me to make me 
thrill to the beauty of a straight, clean dive into 
clear water from a high place. I had learned, from 
Doctor Luther Gulick and his aquatic son Halsey, 
how to teach boys to dive. It was a real teacher’s 
joy to me to watch our little campers float off into 
space, backs arched, legs and feet tight together, 
heads up, arms outspread in angel-wing, swooping 
down to ‘“‘the cool silver shock of the lake’s living 
water’ with the clean stab of a feathered arrow. 

In Mexico I learned to shoot with an uncertain 
revolver bought from a pawnbroker and kept hidden 
under my mattress at home. My targets were cans 
and bottles along the roadside, sheets of paper nailed 
against tree-trunks, and pumpkins in a farmer’s field. 
Once our gang practiced marksmanship by trying to 
nip off corn-stalks with bullets, until an irate old 
woman appeared with a riddled market-basket which 
we had struck by reason of our thoughtless aim. So 
at Camp we built a neat rifle-house, ranged Win- 
chester targets against a high embankment, protected 
the gallery with ropes, set danger signals where they 
were needed and hired an instructor versed in shoot- 
ing-lore from the discovery of gunpowder down to 
the mechanism of the latest automatic. I believe in 
riflery because of its clearly obvious training in con- 
centration, accuracy of judgment, patient persistence 


era be AVE eB OLY: 319 


and conscientious care of a physical thing. Our 
rifles had always to be cleaned and kept cleaned, 
barrel, mechanism and stock. With all my ingrained 
antipathy to war, and despite my prejudice against 
hunting gray-squirrel or deer or any but our posi- 
tively harmful wild-life, I yet believe in the value of 
a rifle as a boy’s possession, and of the lessons that 
lie in its care and right use. 

I learned to drum by beating two sticks to rhythm. 
A few tolerable marches, three or four calls, and a 
sad imitation of the long roll is my entire repertoire. 
Yet [ can teach a boy to drum aright, and I can keep 
him busy at flam and tap until he masters their rudi- 
ments because I regret the wrong ‘“‘setting’’ of my 
codrdinations and have a missionary desire to save 
another soul from my own sin. So, too, with the 
piano; for while I cannot teach its ways myself, I 
caused two of these instruments to be carted over 
our rough roads and deposited at camp so that some 
of our campers might keep in practice, or learn a 
bit from those of the council who, like Bill, could 
play and teach. My own career upon the keys ended 
when I rebelled against practice which prevented my 
playing My Country ’Tis of Thee as I felt that it 
should be played. Sent home as an “‘incorrigible’’ by 
my teacher, I found myself musically adrift and now 
that it is too late to learn even simple lessons with- 
out great effort and drain of time, all to little pur- 
pose, I have made up for my regrets by tiding other 
boys across periods of crisis similar to mine. Music 


320 a AE Re ATTS Bi Oey, 


at Camp, especially our singing of old and local bal- 
lads around the evening fire, seems so much nearer 
real than it ever did to me in school. Again the 
trees make a difference, and above them the stars 
or the clouds, or the moon. It is at such times, when 
music does not seem to need to be learned, but when 
it just bubbles from one’s heart up through one’s 
throat and floats off with the wood-smoke among the 
branches, that I feel we have caught something of 
its inner meaning and magic. 

Remembering the cave-days of our gang in Mex- 
ico, and realizing how much of the caveman still re- 
mains in boy soul, cave life at camp became an art. 
To dig and timber a cave so that safety and comfort 
and romance are alike assured, required time and 
thought and real engineering. ‘The simplest practical 
cave in a caveless country is simply a cellar dug and 
then roofed over with plank and turf. Whatever its 
nature, if a cave be real, it lends itself to a great 
variety of activities that draw out a boy to his limits 
of ingenuity and pains. It becomes an idea around 
which a host of subsidiary ideas cluster. It is good 
training ground for the imagination. A whole book 
should be written on cave-lore for modern boys. 

Shelters, shacks and shanties, next to caves, be- 
come focal points for camp activities on land. Like 
pirate ships and pioneer rafts upon the water, they 
play their role as centralizers, as nuclei of action. 
Then, too, they carry the atmosphere of possession, 
of homesteading. They mean more to a boy than 


urna RoE Ass, UB On; 321 


his tent or his bungalow or his dormitory room. He 
has built his rude cabin. He fortifies it against wind 
and rain and imaginary enemies. He decorates it 
with such art as he may conjure up from within his 
soul. He welcomes friends to share with him his 
own habitation. He alters, expands or remodels it. 
He may even desert it for another, better built and 
of happier location. A little adult guidance helps 
him fashion a livable home which he will remember 
long after other elements of camp life have faded 
from memory. 

To my boyhood gang an ax or a hatchet was for. 
hacking ugly holes in trees to blaze a trail, or for 
chopping down a tree for the sheer fun of hearing 
it fall. At camp an ax was a constructive tool, to 
be kept keen-edged and bright and ready for instant 
use in a definite, purposeful way. ‘The principles of 
forestry, as well as occasional practical need, called 
for the cutting down of tree or sapling. There were 
trails to cut and clearings to make for cabins. We 
talked these things out first. The boys learned how 
and where and when to chop. They were shown, by 
the rings of a pine-stump, how it takes some fifty 
years for God to make a tree which can be felled 
and killed in as many minutes by a small boy with 
a small ax. Our boys learned to think before 
striking, and I believe that many of them learned to 
love trees somewhat as Joyce Kilmer loved them 
when he wrote: 


S22 SD tal SREEPAE : OBiOvy: 


“T think that I shall never see 
AY Poemmovely asa trees 


My pals of Baratillo days carried bowie-knives, 
Spanish daggers, poniards, long-bladed case-knives 
and an occasional stiletto. We seldom used them, 
but, like the wonderful bull’s-eye lanterns of Steven- 
son’s youth, we carried them ever with us under our 
coats, mysterious, -symbolical. My campers were 
allowed a hunting-knife only after they had demon- 
strated that they could use a jack-knife well, and care 
for it almost as a scientist cares for his microscope. 
Few boys did so, of course. Most of their knives 
remained dull, rusty and full of sand and fuzz. The 
few who learned this lesson, however, and won their 
prize, were worth the time and effort that went into 
an apparently impossible job, that of teaching a 
modern boy devotion and patient care of a small, 
common, material thing. 

I never canoed in boyhood. Camp brought me 
rich compensation for what I had missed. To 
paddle throvgh the silent gray marshes by moon- 
light and down the widening creek suddenly to slip 
out onto the silvered expanse of the lake with a 
small boy up in the bow holding his breath at the 
beauty of it all; that made up for much that might 
have been my own experience at his age. Every 
boy should experience the adventurous romance of 
Hiawatha during those years of imaginative play- 
time that never come again. ‘The canoe, as a part 
and symbol of our finest truly American tradition, 


TIE ae TA oe Gye 323 


should belong to the education of our boys and girls 
just as importantly or even more importantly than 
lessons learned at school. ‘To discover how friendly, 
how safe, how tractable, how easily and quickly 
responsive a canoe is when you have mastered it is 
an emotional experience of immeasurable value. It 
is such lessons as these that make for joy in life, that 
give one not only happy memories to turn to, but 
give one the practical, immediate means to grow 
young and buoyant again in whatever later years 
one may pick up his paddle and launch his graceful 
cratt.. lappy ) Dangerous?) Treacherous? 1 Some: 
parents of boys have asked. Yes, until you know 
its ways and whims, and how marvelously it will 
respond to the wrist-turn of a paddle, a slight shift 
of ballast and center of gravity. Not to avoid diff- 
culties or dangers, but how to meet and surmount 
them is yet another lesson which the canoe brings 
home and helps to make organic in our nature. 

There is no setting-up drill except the dance, per- 
haps, comparable to canoe-practice before breakfast. 
I loved to watch the sweep of our great, sturdy war- 
canoes plowing over the shimmering surface of the 
lake in the early morning, eleven sunbaked boys 
singing at their paddles: 


‘Stroke to the song, brother, 
Stroke to the song, 
And it’s stroke, stroke, speed her along, 
Swing to the song, and you'll never go wrong! 
Shoulder to shoulder we’ll speed her along.” 


324 ah FORA Ts BOY; 


Cross rest! Paddle forward! One, two, stroke, 
stroke, stroke! Back-water! Lift paddles! Salute! 
All to the cadence of Llewellyn’s chantey, grays and 
greens out for competitive canoe practice. No taxing 
race, no straining of nerve and muscle for a goal. 
Simply hard work mixed with cheerful play in 
friendly rivalry. The race, the strain, the tax on re- 
serve and second-breath all have their place in the 
growing life of the boy; but at camp they were the 
exception, not the rule. The lads competed generally 
as teams, doing good work, living up to a standard 
and going the standard one better whenever they 
could. Practice for the glory of the group’s team- 
work primarily, with the dream of victory only dim 
in the distance and always tempered with the thought 
of losing with a smile from a good sportsman’s heart. 

Obey first, discuss afterwards! This law of Camp 
applied especially upon the water in canoes. No- 
where as right amidst the possibilities of danger and 
of tragedy is this lesson learned so well. ‘That in 
obedience to law is found the fullest liberty is a 
hard lesson, but one made vividly apparent in a 
twenty-five-foot canoe just as well as upon a ship at 
sea. 

And sailing! I only read about it in my gang- 
hood days. Once I started to run away from home 
for Vera Cruz where a chum of mine agreed to meet 
me. We would build a raft and sail to Texas. My 
mother, however, found me trying to open our big 
saguan gate with the wrong key one night and sent 


THE REALE BOY 325 


me gently back to bed. When morning came she 
shifted my enthusiasm from sailing to mountaineer- 
ing, so that I first learned the feel of rope and rudder 
at our summer camp. 

‘When you introduce a boy to a sailboat,” says 
Mr. Yeomans, “you do him a great service. First 
because the elements, wind and water, are exceed- 
ingly important things to get on some sort of terms 
with—to recognize their humors, their playfulness 
and their range, and the premonitions of each. 
Second, because the tradition of the sail is an old 
and very fascinating one, and the more you know 
of it, the more the construction and performance of 
a ship get into your essential interests, the more 
likely you are to respect everything whose useful- 
ness has made it beautiful—which grew in beauty as 
it grew in serviceability.” 

It was the reading of this paragraph that led me 
to introduce a sailboat to my boys at camp. Pirates, 
traders, explorers, admirals and fishermen grew up 
overnight. ‘Treasure islands were discovered galore, 
and the somewhat stereotyped camp activity of the 
treasure hunt took on new life and led to a hundred 
new adventures. I believe that sailboat represents 
the very best investment in educational equipment 
that I ever made. From it the boys learned more 
vital lessons, great and small, than from any other 
single factor in the physical matrix of camp. 

Only after actually sailing in our pirate-ship, or 
learning the essentials of mast and gear and sail in 


326 TA EB oR RAL BOY 


one of the war canoes did I think it time to take our 
boys down to the “stern and rockbound coast” where 
we could look out and see: 


‘Those splendid ships, each with her grace, her 


glory, 
Her memory of old song or comrade’s story, 
Still in my mind the image of life’s need, 
Beauty in hardest action, beauty in deed.” 


For then, I thought, we could really feel as well as 
see the poetry of their motion and the gracefulness 
of their mass and line against the blue of sea and 
sky. Then, too, our seaside stories would hold a 
fuller meaning. Conrad, Masefield, McFee, 
O’Brien and Melville, with Kipling and Stevenson, 
were partly in our muscles as well as in our ears. 
For us landsmen, hillmen desiring our hills, the sail- 
boat and the sailing canoe had introduced us to the 
born sailor’s desire for 


‘The sight of salt water unbounded, 
The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash 
of the comber wind-hounded, 
The immense and contemptuous surges.” 


By the flare of driftwood on the moon-creamed sand, 
we traveled among atolls and icebergs, rounded the 
Horn, dropped in at Tyre and Sidon, or watched the 
flying fishes on the road to Mandalay. 

There is an artistry in choosing a setting for a 
story, as well as in its telling. ‘“The Aztec Treasure 
House,”’ that boy-soul masterpiece of Janvier’s, is 


VE RE, AN rgiinls Oye 327 


told best under a jutting cliff on a hill or mountain- 
side, with hills and lakes and rivers and valleys melt- 
ing away around one into the panorama of dim 
ranges against a far horizon. Not, however, mind 
you, as a lesson in topography, but merely for back- 
ground in color and form! 

Dramatizing our favorite stories, our songs and 
ballads, and fragments of our life at camp were so 
interesting and inclusive that we had no time for 
imported plays, already written. We built dramatics 
spontaneously, on the inspirational spur of the 
moment. Here “Cap” Llewellyn shone. He should 
have been a professional dramatist instead of a pro- 
fessor of law. At Intervale he began visioning Bible 
stories on the stage. He told them at council fires 
then. Later, at camp, came his opportunity to put 
them into action. ‘The boys responded joyously. 
They became ba-a-a-a-ing sheep, responsive to the 
crook of young David, the shepherd. They turned 
into she-bears, devouring the children who laughed 
at Elijah’s bald head. They were warriors in 
Joshua’s army, and angels of the heavenly host. 
But they acted out stories, not theology. For this 
I was criticized most severely by pious people, who 
were shocked at the language of American boyhood 
when placed in a setting of Palestine thirty centuries 
ago. I remember the look upon the face of an 
amiable camp directress when Fred, our valiant 
David, strode out upon the stage and faced a 
gigantic Goliath on stilts and exclaimed: 


328 VHE REAL BOY 


‘Think you’re some guy, don’t you? Think 
because you're so big you can put it over everybody 
in our camp! You’re just one hell of a big bully, 
that’s all, and you’re going to get yours right now!” 
The slingshot whirled, the wad of paper whizzed 
toward the giant’s head and his laugh turned into 
a groan of pain as he fell at David’s feet. 

‘What language for boys to use in a Biblical 
play!’ whispered the lady to her neighbor on the 
long pine pench. But her companion seemed too 
heartily amused to join in a discussion of Sunday- 
schoo! proprieties. 

The language the boys used was their own. It 
was not written for them, to be memorized and 
parroted. ‘Their own resources, both of word and 
action, were their only salvation from stage-fright, 
or from the disappointment of their fellows. I do 
not remember a single instance of lines learned ‘‘by 
heart” to be repeated. Surely there was enough of 
that in the lives of the boys in school during the 
winter months. Here they were gripped by the spirit 
of a story, they itched to act it out. One or two 
rehearsals and they were ready to stand or fall by 
virtue of their spontaneous artistry. As for lan- 
guage, that which my boys used, while sometimes 
not grammatical, and perhaps a trifle slangy, was as 
sharp-pointed as they could make it and as true to 
their own interpretation of time and place and person 
as anything of Shakespeare’s or Eugene O’Neill’s. 

“T should think it would be dangerous to your 


NE Ere R i AIR Oo 329 


reputation as a camp director to allow your boys 
to talk like that in a Bible play,’ remarked our 
guest afterwards. 

‘Perhaps so. I’ll take a chance on dangers,” I 
replied. 


III 


Horses, like canoes, bring with them an element 
of danger into the life of a boy. I vividly remember 
being dragged, foot in stirrup, over the cobbly street 
of a Mexican village, across a stone-flagged court- 
yard, and deposited on the dirty floor of a dark 
stable . . . and all because I had not learned to 
dismount aright. At camp I employed an ex-cowboy 
to teach the boys how to get on, get off, ride, and 
care for a horse. By care I mean everything that 
pertains to the management of a riding horse. For 
in Mexico I had always relegated saddling, bridling, 
blanketing, cooling down, feeding and watering to a 
moso, or personal servant. Consequently, when first 
I introduced horses to camp, it was mostly through 
visual memory only that I could teach a boy what to 
do. I have often swept out our stables in camp 
alongside the son of some wealthy capitalist whose 
home was servanted completely and where almost 
everything physically possible had been done for the 
lad before he landed at our barn. But to me the joy 
of getting a necessary chore done quickly and prop- 
erly came late. I believe it belongs very early in the 
life of every boy, city or country bred. And to care 


330 STE) RGRAY TIO GB OY: 


for and love a horse is a spiritual experience as 
real and vital as it is difficult, or impossible to de- 
scribe in words. Only the love between boy and dog 
can surpass it in its peculiar field of sympathetic 
friendliness. The element of danger in a boy’s re- 
lation to a horse turns into an asset. he element 
of conquest preliminary to friendliness lends a deep, 
intangible educational value graphically memorable 
in such stories as that of Alexander’s training in 
horsemanship at behest of his father, Philip. I have 
seen physical courage literally bud and blossom and 
bloom during a summer’s relationship between a 
boy and a western pony. 

We boys of the Union Church Sunday-school in 
Mexico fought with our bare fists when we were not ~ 
battling with stones at long range. We knew nothing 
of Queensberry rules except that there was something 
quite unforgivable in hitting below one’s belt. Sheer 
bulk, reach, energy and endurance counted for every- 
thing with us, and we knew almost nothing of the 
boxer’s skill. I found in Llewellyn a man for camp 
who not only liked boxing and boys, but who pos- 
sessed constructive imagination. Boys are always 
running into each other, tripping one another up, 
suddenly swatting their neighbor for no reason at 
all, and falling into petty squabbles about a thousand 
trifles of everyday life. When one of these quarrels 
reached the boiling point, or exploded into a scrap, 
this fistic councilor of ours would pull two bellig- 
erents apart, sit down between them, attempt a 


Ee RORY ALE Oay 331 


reasonable adjudication of their case and, failing, 
would set time for a grudge fight. At the hour 
appointed the two temporary enemies would meet 
face to face in a squared circle, don well-fitting gloves 
and, before an assemblage of their fellows and a 
referee, shook hands and turned their emotion into 
muscular expression. We made a lesson of their 
failure to adjust a difference of viewpoint by way of 
argument and conclusion. The grudge fight did not 
determine who was right and who was wrong. It 
liberated a pent-up, primitive instinct into a primal 
form of expression when other and more civilized » 
methods failed. Besides that it taught something 
of physical courage, or codrdination, of skill and of 
good sportsmanship in “meeting triumph or dis- 
aster and treating those impostors just the same.” 

Myself a rather skinny, light-boned and awkward 
individual, I took a keen delight in watching the 
bodily development of our lads at camp. Nat 
Warren, who became my chief councilor, had made 
himself the very pink of fitness through long years 
of hard discipline and devotion to a physical ideal. 
The boys worshiped him as a muscular hero. The 
contagion of his enthusiasm for the body beautiful 
was almost epidemic. I supported his almost exclu- 
sive concentration upon the neuro-muscular system, 
for I felt that underneath it there lay so many of 
the finer spiritual qualities that need a sound and 
healthy body as a soil in which to grow. Sheer 
physical courage, for instance, easily melts into the 


R32 ah EAR BACL CBO YY 


mental resolution to face new problems squarely, 
tackle them with energy and master them with pre- 
cision. In countless little ways does the sportsman- 
ship of the track, the ring, the mat, the cruising 
course, draw out one’s courtesy of behavior amount- 
ing to no less than sympathy and understanding. As 
a hero, boys worshiped Nat and followed his 
example not only on the horizontal bar or stroking 
with a paddle, but in the field of helpful service, 
and in doing unto others as one would have others 
do to oneself. Qualities of leadership developed 
as a by-product, and I felt that, in our camp, at least, 
there was no reason to lament Mr. Sharp’s conten- 
tion that American education lacks the element of 
training for authority. Obey and follow first, that 
you may command and lead later, became not a 
written or spoken, but a felt and acted motto in our 
community. 

The privilege of helping grow a crop of healthy, 
happy boys; the sense of building something, creating 
something, contributing something of real, if some- 
times of intangible, value to the world of my fellow- 
man was with me at camp. It was with me as it 
had never been before in any undertaking. I had, 
at various times in my career, kept time on a rail- 
road, kept books, cashiered; sold stock, books, hats 
and automobiles; collected rent and bills; managed a 
cotton-waste mill; functioned as secretary to a whole- 
sale junk dealer, a mine president and a bishop; 
reported for newspapers, written editorials, edited 


Up Eee SE AST (1B) Oy 333 


a magazine and taught school. Never, until I 
started camping with boys, did I feel that I was 
wholly myself, wholly useful and active to the limit 
of my small powers. Camp drew me out, to the 
point of complete weariness, if not to exhaustion, by 
the time the season was over. I could not be tem- 
perate because the job was so fascinatingly absorbent 
of my every energy. A born teacher from a heredi- 
tary line of teachers, I had apparently found the 
element in which teacherhood thrives freely, and 
grows to the fullness of its stature. So I felt at . 
that time, however I may now look back at a 
thousand errors and failures and stupid blunders in 
my campwise course. 

Here at camp, without the incubus of all those 
factors which hedge and limit a teacher in his work, 
from principals and college exams to required texts 
and ringing gongs, I felt free to educate (draw out) 
the boys who came to me according to the promptings 
of my inner spirit, and I felt that our little organ- 
ization of boys and young men was my first real 
school, my first real schole (leisure). 


IV 


One evening our lake lay still as a sheet of rose- 
crystal quartz. The sun had set, and its afterglow 
suffused the sky almost to noonline, touching the 
lake into a reflective softness of color that seemed 
to radiate from its quiet depths. Clouds streaked 
and curled in the sky as though Elihu Vedder had 


334 THE REAL BOY 


laid them there with his brush to look down at their 
clear image in the tree-fringed basin of our cove. 
The melting vignette of hardwood seemed more 
vivid on the surface of the water than against the 
western skyline. Venus burned, pale and golden, 
above the marshland where the peepers had begun 
their evensong. Hawkins wandered out of the pine 
grove and stood beside me as day melted into night. 
I believe we felt the same age-old mystery of quie- 
tude which Sidney Lanier tried so hard to put into 
words when he wrote: 


“OQ, what if a sound should be made! 
O, what if a bound should be laid 
To this bow and string tension of beauty and 
silence aspiring— 
To the bend of beauty, the boy, or the hold of 


silence, the string.”’ 


Finally I spoke, very softly, as though we were 
watching a deer. “Jim, go get my Hudson Bay 
blanket, and two blankets of your own. Get your 
paddle and mine. We're off to follow the sunset!” 
The boy vanished, his swift moccasins leaving scarce 
a trace of sound as he dashed among the pines on a 
carpet of soft needles. Presently he appeared again 
beside me, as though he had risen out of the ground. 
We launched Llewellyn’s gray canoe. 

I need mention here only one adventure of our 
journey through the night and into the misty morn- 
ing. We had settled comfortably into our blankets 


iste Rely AST B OAy, 335 


after the usual wriggling preliminaries when one’s 
toes insist upon poking one’s neighbor in the ribs, 
and when one bumps nose against thwart unless he 
remembers distances; and, with a few words about 
the soothing roll of our safely ballasted craft, we 
drifted toward dreamland. The moon had risen 
long before, and we were floating amidlake in the 
gentlest of summer breezes. Our drowsiness was 
broken again and again, as though by some imperious 
call to open our eyes and look out upon the silver 
glory of the watery world around us. Once I raised 
my head just in time to see Jim’s, down stern, rise 
too for a look around. “Look!” he shouted to me 
in a whisper. We beheld a duck. We held our 
breath, hoping it would fly across the moon, for that 
is almost a miracle. It did! Flew straight between 
us and the cream-white disk amidst the feathery 
clouds. Three fellow wild-duck followed, but only 
their leader crossed the moon, eclipsing it for an 
instant with the flap of wide wings. 

Days later I found Jim making crude pencil 
sketches of wild ducks. He had chosen a duck, 
silhouetted against the moon as his symbol and, hav- 
ing won his blank paddle for good campership, he 
wished to decorate it with the symbol in design. It 
was all matter-of-fact enough on the surface. We 
worked out a design together, transferred it to the 
paddle with carbon paper, chose colors, and finally 
we had a handsome paddle blade in blue and orange 
and black. Yet to me, and to him, that material fact 


336 inkl do RECA Io B Ou 


stood for a spiritual experience. We had enshrined 
a memory in color and form. ‘That symbol lived. 

If Art at camp was symbolistic and primitively 
crude, at least it had its roots in feeling and in desire 
for expression. The paddles painted by my boys 
varied down the scale from real works of juvenile 
art to mere grotesques, but, knowing something of 
what went into their making, I could read into the 
crudest of them a soul’s dim artistry. I will not say 
beauty, for only a very few of our paddles could 
claim kinship to that word, yet the spirit that under- 
lies the creation of beautiful things strove to find 
expression. In the rough-and-tumble craftsmanship 
of the boys I caught an echo from Emerson, who 
said, you will remember: ‘The best of beauty is a 
finer charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules 
of art can ever teach, namely, a radiation from the 
work of art of human character, a wonderful expres- 
sion of the deepest and simplest attributes of our 
nature, and, therefore, most intelligible to those souls 
who have these attributes.”’ 

Take a lemon pie, for instance. Teddy liked 
lemon pie above all things in heaven above, or on the 
earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. 
When the spirit of symbols permeated the atmos- 
phere of camp and boys were following Jim in a 
desire to find a symbol of their own, Ted leaped to 
lemon pie with a conclusive finality that was as solid 
as the granite bowlders on our shore. Into that bit 
of pastry he read his own interpretation of the good, 


PPE een hy An Bi Oye 337 


the beautiful, the true. It was, for the moment, his 
highest concrete mode of expression for the boy soul 
of him. Funny? Yes, but very real, and serious, 
and important. 

In decorating his paddle with a lemon pie, bright 
yellow on a field of cerulean blue, Ted became 
acquainted for the first time with brush and paint and 
palette. I watched him at his work, and helped him, 
with the same feeling which Doctor Gulick used to 
have for a boy playing a mouth organ. ‘That was 
the one musical expression, he said, that could com- 
pare in loveliness with Beethoven’s Heroica in full — 
symphony. I must admit that I have caught as much 
joy in the contemplation of Ted’s paddle as has come 
to me when standing before one of Monet’s glorious 
gardens, or an Abbey panel. ‘The gnomish solemnity 
of the lad, the sweat of his wrinkled brow as he 
strove to keep yellow paint within the confines of 
a circling line, the triumphant glow of joy when his 
work was ready to dry in the sun: Cellini himself 
could never have registered such symptoms of the 
boiling artist’s flux within. It seemed to me that 
lemon pie had been given a winged soul of its own, 
and I walked proudly with Ted through the smiles 
of his fellows and those of our senior council, con- 
scious of a hand lent to real creation. 

In later years at camp, Ted outgrew this symbol 
and adopted another and more conventional sign 
for his shield, but his artistic impulse when we 
painted a tent and campfire on the larger blade of 


338 ERE (RRA Dy BOM 


his maturer days was tinctured with the pale cast 
of reason. It did not spring, like sudden bird-song, 
direct from a thoughtless heart. It was no longer 
a feeling akin to mine when first I beheld the Pacific. 
Rather it was more like that which came to me when 
I climbed in search of another such experience as 
only comes once, perhaps, in a lifetime. And yet, 
that primary impulse, that first expression, had set 
its pattern deep in Ted’s soul somewhere and helped 
make joyous his later trials and successes in “‘art.”’ 


Vv 
I have spoken of Ted’s paddle as a “shield,” for 


this was our equivalent of the Arthurian tradition. 
As the knights carried shields in blank until by some 
act of valorous service they might decorate them 
with a pictograph or symbol of achievement, so we 
awarded a clean, blank, unvarnished paddle to all 
those boys who graduated from the stage of 
neophyte campers and entered our inner circle at 
council fire. Later, when they had seen a sign, like 
Hawkins, or proven to me quite conclusively, like 
Teddy, that their ambition or supreme desire or boy 
ideal had taken form in a picture; they might dec- 
orate the blade as moved by the spirit within them. 

The heart of camp was our council fire. Here we 
gathered in three concentric circles on Sunday eve- . 
ning around a little friendly blaze. Here we re- 
viewed the happiest thought and action of the week 
gone by. All things negative were tabu. It was an 


eit mehe ty A ee Ei Gay 339 


hour set aside for the plus sign, for all things con- 
structive, helpful, tonic. Acts of thoughtfulness, of 
courtesy, of good sportsmanship were mentioned 
briefly, but specifically, sometimes with names, some- 
times without. No moral embellishments, no ser- 
monizing, just clear facts stated in a spirit of good- 
will-toward-men. No printed paragraph can convey 
the feeling-tone of the firelit atmosphere radiated 
from the hearts of forty growing boys fused together 
for the moment in cheerfully serious contemplation 
of some of the finer, deeper things of life and its 
erowth in the fellowship of the open air. We sang. 
together, too, and listened to glorious stories, epics 
from the past, freighted with the true heroism of 
man and womankind. Then we closed the day, and 
the week, arm resting on neighbor’s shoulder in a 
friendship circle under the stars. Thus we stood, 
thankful in unison for what life had brought us in 
those words, spoken so long ago, whose poetry grips 
one’s heart today with the same power with which 
it held the hearts of our fathers, and theirs for cen- 
turies behind us. “Then away to sleep soundly until 
the call of a new day sent us plunging into the brisk 
wakefulness of the morning lake. 

It always seemed to me that at our council-circle 
all creeds melted into one. We have stood there 
together, Catholic, Protestant, Hebrew and Pagan, 
‘in tune with the infinite.” For a little while, at 
least, we have felt together what Elbert Hubbard 
used to call ‘the brotherhood of consecrated lives.” 


340 THE.“RBAL BO Y: 


The vision of Rousseau’s beautiful hymn was ours 
not merely in melody and words, but in reality, for 
the mists of daily hurry and confusion were rolled 
away for the time, and we knew each other better, 
and each at his very best. 

Boys do not forget the unconscious lessons learned 
at times like these. They are not learned for repeti- 
tion, nor for examination, they are learned for life. 
The educational artistry of the council-circle is only 
at its dawning. Seton Thompson, through the 
Woodcraft League, has given it perhaps its most 
vital impulse. Its spirit will ramify and permeate 
and lodge, a spark here and there, until there are 
a thousand council fires tomorrow for every one 
today. As for me, I can never forget the glint of 
our flickering flames upon the orange moon on Jim’s 
paddle, and the yellow disk of Teddy’s pie: ‘For 
no divine intelligence, or art, or fire, or wine, is high 
delirious as that rising lark—the child’s soul and its 
daybreak in the dark.” 


CHAPTER XVI 


ON THE RELATION OF CAMP TO HOME 
AND SCHOOL 


Are you faithful to things? Do you teach as the 

land and the sea? Are you done with reviews and 

criticisms of life? Animating now to life itself? 
—WaLtT WHITMAN. 


I met George in his apartment home of seventeen 
rooms and six baths. He was sitting on an uphol- 
stered chair of French court pattern, his thin white 
hands resting on a mahogany tabourette littered with 
manicure tools. A young woman sat before him, 
polishing his nails. A governess stood behind him 
attempting to civilize a shock of unruly, bushman- 
like hair. He looked up at me with big, sleepy eyes 
and asked: ‘‘Are you the man that runs the camp?” 

We lunched together on a breakfast-porch, green 
and colorful with exotic plants. A butler and as- 
sistant butler presented dishes from which their 
young master might make a selection of whatever 
he wished to eat. I watched his choices with min- 
gled astonishment, amusement and pity. 

Afterwards he called the chauffeur and com- 

341 


342 aA ReEMAT a Baye 


manded: “Take Mr. Hamilton to Mr. Porter’s 
house, and make it snappy!” 

His parents had not been at home. He ruled 
there with all the juvenile arrogance of a prince in 
a story book. It was agreed that he come to camp, 
but that I give his tutor a job as one of my coun- 
cilors. This I did because the tutor was a fine young 
fellow who could doubtless be helpful, and because 
he had promised to wean George away from his 
foster-fatherhood within the first week of our season. 

So George, age eight and sole heir to some sixty 
million dollars, came to camp and spent his first 
night on a loft in our big barn. His tutor slept 
beside him, and held his hand until he went to sleep. 
Next day he moved into a tent and bade the coun- 
cilor good-night without a tear. He encountered me 
the following morning as I helped some boys police 
our kitchen yard. I asked George if he were going 
to help. He stamped a small foot on the grass and 
replied: ‘“My father hires you to work for me. Do 
you think I’m going to work for you?” 

A month went by. George wrote to his mother 
that he would like to have her visit him at camp. 
In about three weeks she drove out to where a 
crooked river wound among banks of red clay and 
asked if George were camping there with the boys. 
Two elegant daughters accompanied the mother, and 
terror ran through the hearts of the score or so of 
naked youngsters who were digging caves and play- 
ing cannibal along the river edge. ‘There was a 


THE REAL BOY 343 


tumultous shout for George and a scurrying for 
short gray pants. George hastily arrayed himself 
in a sleeveless shirt, two woolen stockings, which 
would not stay up, and a pair of torn trousers. His 
arms and face and legs were sun-browned almost 
to iodine. His bushman hair was full of sand and 
caked with clay. His eyes were bright and shone 
like a squirrel’s. I felt proud of the handiwork of 
sun and wind and water and clay upon that once 
anemic, hot-house plant. Not so, however, his sis- 
ters and mother. ‘They had come expecting to find 
the boy ready to accompany them to a seaside hotel 
for dinner! 

Of course this is an extreme case. Not many boys 
go to camp who are heirs to sixty million dollars 
and whose parents think more about the condition 
of hair, pants and outer ear than they do about what 
has gone on inside the boy’s soul during two months 
of eating and living with the earth. Every director 
of a good summer camp has stacks of letters of real 
and deep appreciation for what has happened to a 
boy’s body and character while he was away from 
home. Some of these letters show specific trans- 
fers of training from camp-life into home-life and 
school-life. ‘Transfers of attitude might better ex- 
press what takes place. Let me catalog a few of 
these briefly from my sheaf of correspondence: 


Bob went to camp positively inimical, in many 
ways, to his brother Bill. I believe one of the hap- 
piest moments of my life was when, at your council- 


344 ee ER Beet BON ty. 


fire, I saw Bob slap Bill on the back, congratulating 
him upon the winning of his paddle. I hoped that 
spirit would last, carry over into our home. It 
has! I believe it was the influence of the group 
that worked the miracle. Social pressure, so to 
speak, liberated brotherly love, or sympathy, or 
pride. Whatever it was, Bob’s attitude was changed 
toward his younger brother, and the change has set! 


It is this group influence, this social pressure, 
which differentiates organized camp life from how- 
ever campy a summer may be afforded a boy within 
his own family circle. Many a father has said to 
me: ‘‘We have a family camp, with boating, canoe- 
ing, yachting, out-door sports of every kind. Why 
should I send my boy to you?” The positive in- 
fluence of the group mind, of the sublimated gang, 
so to speak, is all I can place against such argument. 
Its value is becoming more and more apparent as 
boys return home from family vacations while their 
friends come back from camp. ‘There are values in 
each, and a boy should experience both. 


Dick will now eat green vegetables. It may seem 
a very insignficant thing to be so happy about; but 
I tell you that it means a great deal tome. His food 
habits at home were a constant source of worry to 
me. His prejudices were almost dangerous to his 
health. Now he eats almost everything with aban- 
don and our cook has to strive hard to keep up her 
reputation, for Dick is constantly talking about those 
wonderful meals at camp. 


Eas RIAL) Bi Ov 345 


Of course it was fresh air, vigorous exercise and 
the influence of the group again, as well as appetiz- 
ing meals which brought about this change of atti- 
tude, or habit. ‘The newer knowledge of nutrition 
makes the food habits of growing children loom 
so important to us nowadays that it is certainly no 
“very insignificant thing’ that camp can and does 
play a role in improving them. In many camps that 
I know there is being made a very intelligent, even 
a scientific approach to diet because of its vital bear- 
ing on the health of the camper with its consequent 
reflection upon the whole caliber of the camp as an 
organization. The mental food habits of children 
are being studied along lines laid down in our schools 
by Doctor Emerson, of Boston, and here I see an 
opportunity for very definite codperation and co- 
ordination between camp and school and home. 


It was hard on Carl to be tried and convicted by 
a court of his peers that way. I am so glad that he 
took his medicine as he did. ‘That he should bite 
another boy in a fight was quite tragic to me. But 
that he should admit his wrong and go through with 
his punishment (which was really more of a life 
lesson than a punishment, after all) makes me feel 
almost glad that he did wrong. If the court had 
merely ostracized him, without giving him that ob- 
vious chance to reinstate himself with his group, I 
think Carl would have suffered more than he bene- 
fited. As it was, he had a chance to come back, 
and I am so happy that he did, and so soon. 


346 THE REAL BOY 


Boy court procedure can go entirely wrong as a 
means of education if the boys do not understand the 
cardinal principle of camp court practice. . That is, 
that it is the boy himself who counts, counts first. 
The group is to be considered only secondly. This, 
of course, reverses our current adult court procedure, 
which aims first at the protection of society. But it 
is in accord with the principles on which Ben Lindsey 
and others have been working in our juvenile courts, 
and it is a principle which every boy juryman or 
judge can understand if it is presented intelligently. 
Always I have put up to my boys in court the fact 
that one of their fellows has done wrong, and that 
it is up to the court to show him how to go right. 
The group, of course, will benefit by his learning his 
lesson, but that he learn it for himself is the im- 
portant thing, the vital thing. This tempers justice 
with mercy, and not only does the culprit learn, but 
the whole group takes another step in constructive 
socialization. I find it necessary, however, to ‘‘rub 
this in” at the beginning of every court procedure, 
and even to break in upon this procedure if neces- 
sary to keep that spirit alive through every move. 

The camp should keep in close touch with the 
parent, and even with the school, if possible, con- 
cerning matters of major discipline, matters of moral 
growth. Too easily this contact is broken. ‘Too 
easily there may be three distinct methods of ap- 
proach to the boy at work upon him. Correspon- 
dence if not a personal interview between director, 


THE REAL BOY 347 


parent and teacher can do a great deal to unify 
methods of relationship to the important question 
of discipline, when discipline is necessary. 


Camp life has been so interesting to Henry that 
his school work seems in danger of suffering. He 
has already begun to contrast the play-way of learn- 
ing things at camp with the work-way of learning 
them in school. He is restless with the discipline of 
the classroom. He says that his teachers are “not 
full of fun, like the councilors . . . they are crabby 
and dull.” Of course this is partly true, for camp 
is really a vacation and school is a vocation, for . 
the time; but what am I going to do about this atti- 
tude of Henry’s toward school? I want him to like 
his lessons, and his teachers. Will camp ‘“‘spoil”’ him 
for both? 


To which I had to reply that I could only hope 
teachers and school will become more councilor-like 
and camp-like, for one can hardly be expected to 
employ crabby councilors in order to avoid contrasts. 
The fact remains, however, that educational summer 
camping may, now and then, make school life pall 
and grow dull by comparison. I believe that its 
present freedom to adopt the most enlightened 
methods of teaching lessons, however, will make the 
summer camp a large leaven in the whole educational 
lump and that the school must adopt more and more 
of these methods in order to keep up with the new 
leadership which the summer camp is. slowly, but 
surely, assuming, at least in its genuinely educational 
units. 


348 AE RAE ASIS BMY 


The way you have made letter-writing interesting 
to the boys has banished my one great fear about 
camp for my son. I was afraid that we would-get 
too far out of touch with each other, for it is like 
pulling teeth to get him to write a letter to anyone. 
Howard has not only written regularly, but he has 
written as though he really wanted to write, as 
though he had something he wished to tell me and 
that I would like to hear. I believe that we grew 
closer to one another instead of farther apart. 


I have caught youngsters crying at letter-writing 
time not because they did not love their parents, or 
hated to write, but simply because they could not yet 
translate emotion. into the right combination of 
graphite and paper. ‘hey decided that they didn’t 
like letter-writing when in fact they just didn’t 
know what to say first or how to say it if they did. 

Placing a blackboard against the wall of our din- 
ing-room, where we wrote our weekly letters, I would 
ask Tom what, to him, was the happiest happening 
of the week. He would stand up and tell me. Then 
Dick and Harry would do likewise until we had the 
gist of the week before us. Then I would ask for 
suggestions for pictures or cartoons to illustrate our 
text. These were simple, crude, obvious. Any boy 
could either copy them or modify them according 
to his whim. This was not merely giving them a 
model, it was presenting a stimulus and a suggestion. 
Sometimes, of course, there was mere copying. 
Mostly it resulted in attempts at variation, and now 


ere Alls Gy, . 349 


and then it led to originality. Always, however, our 
activity carried interest and was alive. Letter-writ- 
ing ceased to be a chore and became fun. ‘The pic- 
tures helped greatly, for, as an old Chinese proverb 
has it, a single picture 1s worth a thousand words. 
Witness the charm of Van Loon’s “Story of Man- 
kind,” and his ‘Story of the Bible,” or, better still, 
his inimitable ‘Wilbur the Hat.” 


Alan has an allowance. At school he banks it and 
does business by check. Can you not make an effort 
at camp to continue a boy’s education in money mat- | 
ters? 


Only indirectly, I replied. We try to keep boys 
so occupied with creating whatever things are neces- 
sary out of the materials of their environment that 
they will forget for a while that money or banks 
exist. Surely there is time enough in the winter, 
at home and at school, for all the lessons in busi- 
ness and finance that a boy needs. At camp we try 
to become as nearly primitive as possible. If Alan 
loses his hatchet he suffers from the loss acutely, 
for a hatchet is a very necessary implement in the 
woods. His allowance covers the cost of a new 
one, but under pioneer conditions of life he would 
not have an allowance to fall back upon. It is too 
much to expect him to make a new hatchet out of 
stone or bronze, but he must either shift as best he 
may without one, find his own again, or definitely 
earn a new one. ‘That is about as near as we get to 


350 LOVE REA) Beye 


education in money matters at camp. The boys get 
closer, for checks come in letters from home. Our 
effort then is to lead the boy to forget his check, and 
its power to procure things extraneous to camp life. 
Usually we succeed. Sometimes the boy wins and 
buys a steel fishing rod and nickel-plated reel to 
replace his pole cut in the woods and adorned with a 
wooden spool. Then I lament our failure in tech- 
nique and resolve to do better next time. 


Jack seems more orderly at home than he was 
before he went to camp. But Bill is less so. Jack 
has acquired a pride in keeping his tools sharp and 
bright and where they belong. He makes up his 
own bed and his room is neat. Bill seems glad of a 
chance not to have to make his bed or keep things 
straight. He behaves as though a certain pressure 
has been removed since leaving camp, and feels at 
liberty to be “‘sloppy,” as the boys call untidiness. 
Why should this be so? 


Jack was the older of these brothers and lived in 
a tent governed by the group withinit. They elected 
their own “‘scout,’’ as they called the leader, every 
week. Every member of the group of six had his 
chance at leadership. The pride these boys took 
in their habitation and its surroundings was a re- 
sultant of the group-mind. The pressure upon each 
individual to keep him near his best was that of the 
tent as a composite unit of camp. ‘The attitude 


eis hey RIERA OB OY. 351 


toward neatness of person, of things, of surround- 
ings was based on the spirit of the gang. 

Bill, the younger brother, lived under direction 
of an adult councilor, who, while he strove in his 
way toward making his bungalow democratic, still 
exercised considerable influence directly over the 
boys. Neatness and order were the result either 
of a liking for the councilor and desire to please 
him, or of a submission to his will and authority. 

Of course this difference of conditions under 
which the boys lived does not account for their 
attitude toward orderliness at home; but I believe 
it may be considered. Individual differences of in- 
herent temperament are probably accountable more 
than anything else in cases of this kind. Yet there 
remains a point here worth thinking about. 

I believe that the more we can accomplish in 
molding boy attitudes through the pressure or dis- 
cipline of the boy-group, the nearer we will approach 
the ideal of helping to form character through an 
appeal to the best inward desires of the individual 
boy. We approach here the kernel of democracy, 
of service to one’s fellow-man even at cost of labor 
to oneself, or even pain. For it is sometimes quite 
painful to a boy to put off an intense and immediate 
desire to catch a fish down by a big rock on the shore 
in order to sweep a tent or make up a cot. His 
whole attitude toward this task, however, is hap- 
pier, more constructive, if the pressure upon him 
is one of the group mind, and not that of ‘‘authority 


352 THE REAL | BOY 


from above.” Of course this is a trite educational 
principle; but I am merely reiterating it because it 
applies in so many ways to the relationship of camp 
to home, and to school, and crops out again and 
again in such concrete cases as the one I have here 
set down. 


Sam says you do not have “nature study”’ at camp. 
But I find that he has learned more about wild things 
and their habits than he has ever known before. If 
you have been able to do so much more for the boys 
in nature-lore than the school has done through the 
winter without “nature study,” then what could you 
not do if you included this in your camp program? 


The truth of the matter is that we concentrated 
very largely on nature-lore, but we had no classes, 
no instructor, no ‘‘nature-walks,”’ no texts, and no 
formal demonstrations. I regretted not having a 
specialist in this field, but they are so difficult to 
find and keep! Of course there are hundreds of 
teachers of botany and natural science, but the school- 
teacher is not the type of person one wants in a 
summer camp, especially in the realm of nature 
study. They make of it too much a study and too 
little a spontaneous experience. If one could find 
such combined nature men and nature teachers as 
Professor Palmer, of Cornell, or Professor Sharp, 
of Boston University, and draft them into sum- 
mer camping, we would soon evolve a race of 
nature lovers such as has never been seen before 


THE REAL BOY 353 


on the face of the earth. As it is, we must do all 
we can to enrich the lives of boys and girls with such 
intimate acquaintance with living things in the woods 
and fields and water as best we are able. Surely 
the summer camp, with its wealth of out-of-doors 
material can supplement the school and the home 
immeasurably, but it must do so by a careful exclu- 
sion of the spirit of the “‘lesson”’ or of the classroom 
from its program. I felt it a real compliment to be 
told that, with our meager equipment for real 
nature-lore work, Sam had gone home with a stimu- 
lated interest in wild life, and at the same time ap- 
parently unconscious that we had made persistent 
effort to bring this interest about! 

Not one councilor at camp, but every councilor 
should be a naturalist at heart. If he comes with- 
out knowledge, he should at least bring with him the 
spirit of the learner, and the very fact that he wants 
to learn all he can about the floral and faunal popu- 
lation of his summer environment will make of him 
a good teacher. The binocular, the field note- 
book, the bird book, animal book, tree book, flower 
book, convenient for the pocket, should be a part 
of his equipment. Microscope, scalpel, bone saw, 
camera, net, collection box or specimen case should 
not be the property of one individual intent, as it 
were, upon a specialty. Every hike, every hour 
of apparently idle play in a boat on the swamp or 
upon the lake should add something to the nature- 
lore of camp. And not merely to make collections, 


354 DE) ROB PAI BONY: 


as of butterflies or bugs, but to observe habits of 
wild life at first hand should be the cardinal prin- 
ciple of such an interest at camp. ‘There is little 
need for a museum, except that it gives an oppor- 
tunity for sharing with others what one has himself 
discovered. ‘To hunt the bird without a gun, and 
love the wild flower but leave it on its stem, is the 
deeper lesson to be learned. Here the summer camp 
has a supreme advantage over the city school, and 
there should be some day a definite codrdinative co- 
operation between the two in this important phase 
of fundamental education. 


I don’t want anything said to my boy about life 
in relation to sex. I want him to get his views about 
reproduction and all that pertains to sex from my- 
self or from his mother. If any problem arises in 
this connection, please communicate with me before 
it is handled. I will give instructions as to pro- 
cedure. 


Thus one father wrote to me. Another wrote me 
in a vein diametrically opposite: 


One of the reasons for sending Bert to camp is 
that I believe he can get from you some of the knowl- 
edge of vital facts in life which I am not able to 
give him. I do not know how to approach the boy. 
With all my desire to do so, I am kept back, prob- 
ably by my own early training or the lack of it. I 
hope that I may count on you for this. 


While a teacher in a private school voiced things 
thusly: 


CREE ere RIB ACTS Bi Gay: 355 


We have tried teaching sex biology and sex hy- 
giene in our school as a part of our courses in natural 
science and physiology. Somehow I do not feel that 
we get very far with the boys. It is all too academic. 
The question itself is too personal, too emotional, 
especially when it comes to the older boys, to be 
treated merely as so much algebra or botany. At 
camp, it seems to me, there will be freedom for a 
personal approach to each individual problem as it 
arises. You have more leisure, more opportunity 
for dealing with an individual instead of with a 
class or group. 


The influence of home training upon a boy counts 
here beyond measure. It counts for camp, as well 
as for the boy. I have made it a point to try to dis- 
cover a boy’s aititude toward sex, and something of 
his knowledge in order to know how to handle him 
in relation to his fellow campers. ‘This can only 
be done very indirectly, for reactions must be un- 
studied and spontaneous. ‘Through reciprocal con 
fidence between myself and my Junior Council of 
older campers whom I have grown to know and 
trust, and who know and trust me, I have been able 
to gather a great deal of information which I could 
never have obtained direct. These boys came to me 
with questions or suggestions or with reports of 
things seen or overheard because they knew that 
they were not acting as disciplinary spies, but as 
friendly codperators for the best interests of their 
fellows. They knew that there was not the slightest 
element of crime and punishment in the equation. 


356 OO Rea Ova 


They were sure of my absolute confidence in them- 
selves, and in their comrades. ‘Their role was inter- 
mediary between myself and the morale of our camp- 
ers rather than between myself and any individual 
boy. They felt a responsibility of leadership, of co- 
directorship with myself and with some of my Sen- 
ior Council. And yet they did so without any undue 
assumption of authority because they had learned 
to understand the principles upon which camp was 
founded, where authority was at its minimum and 
friendliness ruled instead. 

My campers have been mostly pre-adolescent, and 
adolescent only in the first three or four years of 
this nodal period. They have been an exceptionally 
superior group of boys both in intelligence and in 
refinement of home life. In this respect I have not 
been dealing with an average group of boys. The 
contrast between their viewpoint of sex, and that of 
a few boy gangs in New York City with which | 
have become acquainted is very vivid. When I say, 
therefore, that the sexual problem of the pre-ado- 
lescent and adolescent boy has been at a minimum in 
this camp group, I am speaking of an exception, and 
not of a rule. While I think that our camp has 
considerably influenced the forming of boy attitudes 
toward matters of sex, and especially of sexual phys- 
iology, I do not see that we have here a major 
problem. Perhaps it might become so if the rela- 
tion of camp to home and school were better co- 
ordinated. It may be that there is a field here for 


THE REAL BOY 357 


a great deal of constructively reciprocal work be- 
tween these three factors in the life of a boy. 


I am delighted that the boys who returned this 
fall to our school from your camp have shown a 
marked increase in athletic interest. Not only do 
they bring back a new repertoire of games and 
stunts, but their spirit is more sportsmanlike than 
ever. I notice a distinct change from the individ- 
ually competitive element over into unit or group 
competitions. Team-work, and striving for the 
glory of the side or unit, seems to have gripped 
them, even the younger boys not yet in the co- 
operative or team-work age. 


It was Doctor Luther Gulick who, as head of the 
Public School Athletic League in New York City, 
gave the greatest stimulus toward this shift from 
individual to group competitions, the replacement 
of the few stars by the whole team as an object of 
devotion. This principle had become organic in 
the morale of our camp athletics, so that, when it 
reflected itself in the school activities of the boys 
later, it was but a return in intensified form of a 
tradition which began in public school athletics many 
years ago. Looking forward myself to what Stuart 
Sherman has called ‘“The Stadium Age” for America 
in the field of recreation and leisure time, I feel that 
school and camp can reciprocate best of all in the 
domain of physical development through the fun of 
athletics, wood sports and (in time) the dance. 


358 THE REAL BOY 


If I were sure that you would have no Jews in 
your camp next summer, I would be glad to send 
Robert to you. I noticed a sprinkling of Jewish boys 
when I visited you in July, and I think that is very 
unfortunate. For, however nice those boys may have 
been, you will be shutting yourself off from many 
others, like Robert, for instance, who might come if 
you were more discriminating. You really must con- 
sider the social life the boys are going into, and the 
homes from which they come. 


To which I could only reply, of course, that Rob- 
ert might doubtless find a camp better fitted to his 
future social needs. It is gratifying to me to note 
that this was the single instance of parental objec- 
tion to my policy of accepting a boy on his own merit, 
without reference to faith or race or social strata. 
I have refused to take Jewish boys, just as I have 
refused Protestants and Catholics, and I have been 
sometimes misunderstood when [ have done so; but 
it has always been either because I did not want that 
particular boy in camp, or because we had no place 
left for another camper. When some of my friendly 
advisors have warned me that if my camp remained 
open to Jews it would soon be swamped by a flood 
of them, I replied that so long as this flood was 
composed of the quality and caliber of the Jewish 
boys we had already admitted, I was quite as willing 
to be swamped by them as by an inundation of Pres- 
byterians who might come up to the same standard. 
As it is, I have seen no symptoms of being over- 
run by either. 


DE ei dds PRGA De ba oft ONE sph) 


But I have noticed the tendency in the field of sum- 
mer camps to gravitate toward religious groups. 
There are Catholic camps, and Christian Science 
camps, Baptist, Methodist, Theosophist, Presbyte- 
rian, Spiritualist and Socialist. This, of course, is 
regrettable to one who believes a boy will grow 
into fuller and better proportions in a religiously 
cosmopolitan group than within the limits of a single 
cult. 

My own ideal camp community would consist of 
about sixty boys coming to me from thirty different: 
religious isms. I should like two Japs, two Philip- 
pinos, two East Indians, two American Indians, two 
American Nordic Presbyterians and so on until a 
wide cosmopolitan territory was covered. I believe 
each one of them would respond, if he were a 
healthy, normal, intelligent and sensitive lad, to the 
unlabeled religion of friendliness in the open air, 
and with the things of the out-of-doors. I believe 
that we could all easily forget, for a while, about 
Advent, Swaraj, Sacraments, Passover, Hell, 
Heaven and their kindred symbolisms and live in a 
holy communion with the sun, the moon, the stars 
and the people of the earth and air as did St. Francis 
after the pattern of his Lord. 

However, in even such an un-utopian community 
as our little camp was, I believed that the best prepa- 
ration for whatever society a boy was to enter in 
America was that of rubbing up against as many dif- 
ferent types of mind as could be brought together in 


360 TH Bo RRA B Ory: 


a free atmosphere of work and play. I had to be 
discriminating only as to the quality of the type, and 
even that was a difficult thing to do, for my heart 
has gone out just as sympathetically toward Mike 
Brennan, the toughest nut on Barrow Street, as it 
has toward George of the manicured nails and sixty 
millions. My instinct of self-preservation alone has 
kept me from bringing Mike to camp as an antidote 
for George. Yet George approached Mike during 
the summer he was with us, and much closer than I 
should ever like to see Mike become like George! 
Here the camp begins to be dominated by our in- 
corrigible mania for standardization. We must 
adopt entrance exams, evolve requirements, keep the 
pace. The relative leisure of camp life is already 
threatened by the carrying over of school traditions, 
of athletic organizations, of the academic time- 
clock and routine. Quantity production involves us 
here just as it does in automobiles or pins. To re- 
duce a camp fee means of necessity to increase the 
number of campers. [hat means more organiza- 
tion, with consequent standardization of practice and 
routine of procedure. George and Mike must fit 
the routine. If Mike is a Catholic and has to go 
to Mass on Sunday, he will! draft a councilor from 
his job, or involve a special trip of the bus to town 
and back. If George is a Christian Scientist and 
cannot take a dose of castor oil after raiding an 
apple tree in early August, the Department of First 
Aid is up against a problem not fitted to its sphere. 


DPE RE ACD B'@ vi 361 


So it were better that Mike go to a parochial camp, 
and George to one of Mrs. Eddy’s persuasion. I 
cite these not as typical, but as model cases that will 
arise as the Fordization of summer camps follows 
that of our Public School System. There is no use 
regretting this; one must face the issue. A partial 
answer lies in the devotion of a few camp directors 
to the small-unit idea. Fortunately if such directors 
are able men and women, the prices they can com- 
mand for their service to a small number of boys or 
girls will compensate for the lesser number of camp- 
ers. Unfortunately it will make such camps select 
and, as related to the whole body of summer camps, 
undemocratic. 

One may hope, but he can hardly believe, that our 
summer camps, with their golden opportunity for 
supplementing the routinized school with two months 
or more of real leisure for constructive fun, will 
escape the contagion of organized standards and 
practice. One dreads the picture which Weare Hol- 
brook makes of our way of “helping the kiddies’’: 


Whereupon the adult males, glowing benevolently, 
divide themselves into playground committees, soda- 
water committees, shoot-the-chute committees, com- 
mittees on awards, entries, classification, eligibility, 
judging, starting, stopping, cheering, back-patting, 
_hand-clapping. The children, dazzled by badges, 
prizes and patronizing ovations are dragged from 
their home-made games and thrust into a custom- 
tailored carnival where every smile is supervised. 


362 SA ee Relea eB aye 


Remembering my gangster days in Mexico, and in 
the face of the fact that I have tried to give boys at 
camp some of the constructive things which were not 
in my lot as a youngster, I still wonder if, in our 
attempt to make play an education, we may not 
swing too far. Under our growing system of points, 
awards and honors, for instance: 


Little Wilbur doesn’t even take a stroll to the old 
Sloo without putting on his pedometer so that he 
can get credit for 1.7 miles on his hiking record. 
When he accumulates a grand total of 200 miles he 
will become a C grade pioneer in the Trail-Makers’ 
Club of the Junior Chamber of Commerce. 


I sincerely hope that we camp directors are not 
becoming the kind of professional playmate which 
Mr. Holbrook has pictured, swiftly suppressing the 
inherent originality of boy mind until it fits the man- 
made mold and is ready to misunderstand the gen- 
eration which is to follow it into the world. Nor the 
kind who is going to ask: “Huck Finn, have you done 
your good deed today?” 


CHAPTER XVII 


MY ALUMNI TALK ABOUT LIFE 


The well educated man retains in maturity the 
readiness of youth for making changes that are 
needed when they are needed. Education, then, is 
to aim at variability in the student, a cultivated 


variability. 
—GEo. A. CoE. 


I 


OnE of the happy privileges of a teacher is that of 
conversations with former pupils after they have 
stepped from school into the busy life of what one 
calls “‘the world.” At such times the questions haunt 
me: “‘What has history, literature, poetry, drawing 
and my personal relationship to this boy amounted 
to? How does it touch his life? What has it done 
to make his life richer and happier?” I find that I 
care almost nothing for what he may remember 
about Shakespeare or Milton or Wells. I am in- 
terested in his attitude, his point of view, his phi- 
losophy of life. For, after all, as Professor Coe 
puts it: “The question is not what baggage is one 
traveling with? But, in what direction is one going? 
From what country to what country?” 

Of course my alumni come back to talk about their 
business or profession, about politics and current 

363 


364 DHE RE AT Bio wy 


events. But what most concerns these young men 
is sex, marriage, love, friendship and the family. 
That is because they are facing the very palpable 
current change in the minor, or subsidiary standards 
of thought and conduct which relate to sex and 
society. And, free and self-reliant though they are, 
many times, they still are hungry for friendly sug- 
gestion, if not for advice. 

One night I lay asleep in my tiny cabin on the 
shore of a lonely woodland pond. ‘The opening of 
my door awakened me and I[ heard my name spoken 
low and very sweetly by a truly golden voice. ‘The 
only access to the cabin was by ferry, unless one 
clambered down a huge jumble of great bowlders 
piled up for a hundred feet or more behind me in 
the woods. My own canoe was the only craft on the 
pond, and I knew that it rested on its rack by the 
dock. How, then, had this voice discovered my 
whereabouts? A dim round light traveled across 
the room in my direction after I had said a sleepy 
hello and who are you. It became the dial of a 
wrist-watch, and, holding out my hand, I clasped a 
small firm hand in return and the voice above me 
said: ‘Don’t you know who I am?’”’ Then the screen 
door opened again and there followed a patter of 
paws across the floor. A cold nose nudged the top 
of my head. Once more the door creaked and in 
tramped a pair of hunting shoes, shaking the cabin 
with the weight they carried above them. A flash- 
light blinded me for an instant, then revealed a beau- 


der eR EA Eo oR OY 365 


tiful oval face set in a wide frame of gold-brown 
curls and smiling down at me like a materialized 
spirit from nowhere. I had never seen that face 
before, nor heard its voice, so my bewilderment in- 
creased. The wrist-watch hand was withdrawn from 
mine, seized the light and turned it upon the amused 
countenance of Bob Grant, an old Intervale boy who 
plunged immediately into an historic explanation of 
this inroad upon my lonely quietude at midnight. 

‘‘Do you remember the days when I used to ride 
from school to the post office with the mail?” he 
asked. I did remember, vividly, those cold winter 
mornings when he used to saddle up a shaggy roan 
pony, sling the mail bags across the saddle, leap on 
with a crisp gee-up, and gallop away across the 
rolling prairie. JI used to wonder what the boy 
dreamed about on those long before-breakfast rides, 
for I had spent hundreds of hours on horseback in 
my boyhood and knew that it was then that one 
dreamed in his most colorful and active visions of 
the world to be his some day. 

“God, how I hated that job, and how I loved it!” 
he exclaimed. ‘‘Cold! my fingers felt frozen what- 
ever gloves I wore. My feet were numb. My 
breath would turn to ice on the sheepskin collar of 
my mackinaw. I’d rub my nose in that ice to keep 
it from feeling gone. I seemed to ache all over 
before I got home with the mail. But I was proud 
of that job! Felt like a part of Uncle Sam. Felt 
like Bill Cody on his route across the plains with a 


366 TH ES Ren CAL oy Bs) One 


trust that had to be carried through. Almost saw 
Indians and bandits along the way. Used to dream 
of going west to rustle cattle, own a ranch, get rich. 
I'd think of getting married and sitting by a fire at 
night, like you and Kitty. Seemed to warm me up 
a little to think about that. Wondered if my wife 
would make waffles as good as Kit’s. Thought about 
children, and wondered if birth-control were right. 
Guess I knew everything about birth-control even 
in those days. Don’t see why all this fuss about it 
nowadays. Are people really so ignorant? Re- 
member how I used to talk to you about marriage? 
You were the only grown-up I would talk to. Sur- 
prised me, the way you’d speak to a kid! You'd 
answer questions about sex just as you would about 
history or spelling. Sometimes I would ask you 
about things I knew already just to see what you'd 
say. You never side-stepped anything. Guess that’s 
the reason I’ve come back to you now to talk about 
marriage. I wonder if I’m really in love? How is 
a fellow going to know? And if he does know, how 
is he going to know he’s in love with the right girl 
to tie up"to for theyrest’ ot his liter’ 

“But how did you get here?” I interrupted. “And 
who is this you’ve brought with you? Put an end 
to the mystery and then reminisce, if you must!” 

‘Be patient. We'll show you how we got here 
after breakfast. [his is Hester Lawson. We've 
come to ask you whether we shall be married. Not 
that we'll take your advice, but we want to talk it 


List g MA Toe Cry 367 


over with you, just as we’ve talked it over ourselves. 
A third person helps, you know, if he’s really a 
friend and understands. We both feel dead sure 
we're in love, but being in love is one thing; getting 
married is quite another. Do you remember the 
book you gave me when I graduated from Inter- 
vale, Cornelia Parker’s “An American Idy!’?? Well, 
I decided that nothing less than that sort of mar- 
ried life would satisfy me. Hester and I have read 
it through. We wonder if we’re built for that sort 
of a life together. That book sounds true, but how 
do we know it’s the whole truth? Can things pan 
out so happily as that? How do we know that we 
can fit our minds together so? Everything fine now, 
but how about ten years from now, or twenty? And 
children, what about them? Are acquired char- 
acters inheritable? Will we have such a devil of 
a time with our kids as my dad has had with me and 
with my brothers? You know something about the 
hell it has been for him. Hester and I want chil- 
dren. I’dstay a bachelor if it weren’t for kids. But 
everywhere, all around us, people so unhappy in 
their homes. Kids such a gamble. Always turning 
out dead against what you’d want them to be. How 
can one tell beforehand? Can’t, I guess, but we want 
to talk about it all anyhow, and here we are!”’ 

‘You’ve certainly staged a romantic setting for 
a discussion,” I replied. ‘‘Let’s built a fire, settle 
down comfortably over a pipe and see how far we 
can travel before breakfast.” 


368 TBE Rav AL BOY, 


I cannot set down here a report of our triangular 
conversation before flaming beech logs, beginning a 
little after midnight and lasting until sunlight paled 
the glow of embers into opalescent memories of our 
friendly, soul-warming fire. Suffice it that a young 
man and a young woman talked through me to each 
other more freely, more frankly, more thoroughly 
than even they would talk to each other about 
the most important thing in their lives at that 
moment. I felt like a chemical catylizer, useful only 
as a medium of interchange of elements, doing my 
part merely by force of presence in the equation. 
For here, again, “‘living is an art that everyone must 
learn, but no one can teach.” Yet one may help 
others learn by merely being on hand at the right 
moment! 

Bob’s experience among girls and women since 
leaving school had convinced him that the impor- 
tance of sex alone has been unduly magnified when 
it comes to the relationship of man and woman in 
the important phases of their life together. His 
conclusions were based on observation and expe- 
rience in that world of romantic experiment which 
Ben Lindsey has pictured for us so vividly in his 
writings on modern youth. Mere sex experience had 
taught him little about those fundamentals upon 
which his reason and intuition (‘hunch,” he cailed 
it) told him that the constructive friendship of 
happy marriage should be builded. It was psychol- 


ie eR EB ALL WB Ong 369 


ogy and not physiology that perplexed him. So, too, 
with Hester. 

After breakfast we went down to the shore of the 
lake where they showed me a tiny canoe in which 
they had paddled, with their dog and blanket-rolls, 
across my pond. It had ridden atop their Ford for 
hundreds of miles, ready for any water deep enough 
to hold it up. Romance in that canoe, and in that 
Ford! ‘They had embarked upon a trial honey- 
moon, as it were, and yet they were sufficiently in- 
telligent already in the ways of our world to know 
that this was quite different from a trial marriage. 
Believing in the values of trial marriage, they were 
not illusioned into the belief that their experience 
together was more than a prelude to such an experi- 
ment or testing ground. 

‘Suppose we were back at Intervale,’”’ said Bob. 
“Tf I had asked you then if you believed in trial 
marriage, what would you have said? Would you, 
as a teacher, have recommended it to me as some- 
thing to plan for and look forward to?” 

“Bob,” I replied, “is it not quite apparent that 
most marriages in America are trial marriages? 
Are we not dealing with a name, or label, instead of 
with the reality, when we make a distinction? ‘The 
divorce rate indicates, but it does not cover, the ex- 
perimental fact of most marriages. Certainly I 
hope that, except where children enter the equation, 
there may be more of the kind of intelligent ap- 
proach which you and Hester are making to the 


370 SPURTE RAS ai Gaya 


problem, and a more open social mind toward what 
you and so many others are doing. When the child 
enters, then I think there needs to be a very definite 
modification of our whole attitude, but that is a 
long story!” 

When we returned to the cabin, I read to them 
a few stray pages from Stuart Sherman’s “Talks 
with Cornelia,” and closed with the paragraph where 
he says: 


‘‘T hope that, when they feel the ache of the soul’s 
ultimate solitude and are restless and full of vague 
desires they may be capable of lucid introspection; 
that they may be frank and plain with themselves, 
and call things by their right names, and say to them- 
selves something like this: ‘I am filled with tedium 
and passionate craving. I shall be hard to satisfy, 
for [am thirsty for a deep draught of human felicity. 
What I crave is not described or named in the phys- 
1ologies. I crave beauty, sympathy, sweetness, in- 
centive, perfume, difference, vivacity, wit, cleanness, 
grace, devotion, caprice, pride, kindness, blitheness, 
fortitude. I will not look for these things where 
I know they cannot be found, nor under conditions 
in which I know they cannot be maintained. But if 
I find them, and where they thrive, I shall wish to 
express my joy by some great act of faith and the 
hazard of all I hope to “be. And I shall not like 
the town clerk to be the sole recorder of my dis- 
covery and my faith. I shall wish witnesses, high 
witnesses, whatever is august and splendid in the 
order of the world, to enwheel me round and bid me 
welcome to that order.’ That is the sort of self- 


Ter ERE AT eB Ory 371 


realization to which hope our sons and daughters 
are coming.” 


Bob and Hester had listened attentively, medi- 
tatively. ‘That stuff seems to speak to your heart,” 
said Bob. “You don’t quite understand it, but it 
listens true. I guess we can only do our best, going 
the way we feel is right. We both want something 
big. Perhaps, after all, we’ve got to find it by the 
method of trial and success. I hope we’re not 
wrong in the way we tackle it.” i 


II 


Bob’s attitude, and Hester’s, was wholesome, con- 
structive and gave promise of an approach to mar- 
riage at once intelligent and romantic. 

Not so, however, with Jim Davis. Jim made me 
feel, when he had grown to calendar manhood, that 
my methods were wrong, my philosophy abnormal, 
my very example of only negative influence. I 
watched him among his fellows, an average modern 
Penrod (is not Booth Tarkington’s variety obsoles- 
cent, and will it not soon become as extinct as the 
dodo or the dinosaur?), paying his fines for speed- 
ing and for parking without lights, getting occa- 
sionally drunk, flitting from one affinity to another, 
“getting by” fairly well on his job, eating, drinking 
and making merry today because tomorrow one 
might die. He incarnated the nebulous philosophy 
of modern: youth, as we find it sketched in our “‘lit- 


372 AE (RANE Boy 


erature’ of today. He bubbled fun continuously, 
slept occasionally and was altogether what is cur- 
rently known as a regular guy (a term, of course, 
which may be completely supplanted by another by 
the time this book goes to press). Yet he too came 
to me once in a while confessing his sins of commis- 
sion, wondering what good there was in it all, reso- 
lute to get married and settle down, perplexed as to 
what girl to marry, curious in regard to children 
and heredity and begging for a tailor-made philoso- 
phy of life with which to walk away into eternal 
contentment. He seemed utterly lacking in ground- 
work, in spiritual foundation. I could discover no 
roots to follow down. Doubtless there were some. 
I merely failed in my search. As for any definite 
influence in the boy’s life as a teacher, it seemed 
as though I might just as well have never known 
him. He seemed to drift, rudderless, before spo- 
radic gusts of circumstance and time. 

Helen, Jim’s favorite girl, was one of those 
daughters whom so many mothers are talking about 
as hers talked to me one day in her presence. 

‘Why can’t girls today take our word for things? 
Why must they experiment? Why must they run 
risks and enter dangers? ‘They will surely suffer 
by drifting wrong instead of going right. Why can 
they not learn from our experiences instead of hay- 
ing to go through their own?” 

Jim had been bringing Helen home after mid- 
night instead of before. There seemed to be some- 


Cet RAL BOY 373 


thing inherently wrong with post-midnight hours 
in her mother’s mind. Maternal fear of the auto- 
mobile and the dance seemed to me so naive. This 
good mother sat fearing things that had already 
happened long ago. The dance and the automobile 
had led, as Ben Lindsey has shown in terms of sta- 
tistical figures, to their commonly predictable re- 
sult with this daughter. She had lost a once price- 
less “‘virtue’’ without any apparent result, tragic or 
otherwise. She was one of the typical flappers of 
the ‘intelligentsia’ who are contributing to current 
humor as well as to moral philosophy. There 1s 
much more truth than fiction in the story (which I 
have not yet seen in print) of the young lady who, 
when her mother regretted the coming of another 
child, said to her: “O mother! if you had only asked 
me, I could have told you how to avoid another 
kid.” JI do not repeat this here for fun, but to 
emphasize a cardinal point in regard to the part 
which a knowledge of birth-control is playing in the 
minds, not only of young men and women. but of 
boys and girls. 

Bob Grant, at Intervale, was not alone in his 
speculations about marriage, children and methods 
of controlling birth. Jim Davis and Helen had no 
fear of the child as a possible consequence of their 
experimental relationship. Bob and Jim, Hester 
and Helen, are only typical of young men and 
women whom I have known whose education in sex 
began at school, but not in the classroom. My point 


374 THE REAL BOY 


is that there remains a vast difference between such 
attitudes toward sex as those of Bob’s and Jim’s, 
Hester’s and Helen’s. And the educational question 
here is not one of knowledge, but one of guidance 
into attitude, or point of view. Cornelia Parker’s 
‘‘An American Idyl’ had led both Bob and Hester to 
desire something in life that transcended sex per se, 
that carried them into the larger and more fascinat- 
ing complexities of reciprocal adjustment on the 
plane of ideas. Jim and Helen had plunged emo- 
tionally into a series of experiences, not without 
precedent, but still quite contrary to the accepted 
standards of parental authority at least. They be- 
lieved, I think, that out of these experiences was to 
come something of the wisdom of life, as well as 
its knowledge. Both these young people talked 
matters over with me, and both of them seemed 
completely immune to suggestion in any other direc- 
tion than that of emotional sex relationships. I 
marveled at this, and wondered how much their 
early childhood training might have to do with the 
bent, with the almost complete set of their minds in 
this regard. Perhaps an intelligent psychoanalysis 
would have told their story. 


III 


_ The priest, the doctor and the lawyer have 

always maintained a confessional as a part of their 
job. The psychoanalyst is with us to stay for a 
long time to come. These professionals deal prin- 


THeb ROE AT. BONY: 375 


cipally, at least in their confessionals, with sickness 
and with sin. They try to tell us how we may go 
right after we have gone wrong to the point where 
we come to them with our woes. The teacher, too, 
has dealt principally with errors. Only recently in 
our own educational system has the method of trial 
and success begun to replace the doctrine of progress 
through trial and error and the mere correction of 
mistakes. I wonder if it is not time for a positive 
confessional. I wonder especially whether there 
might be some day in every school a teacher whose 
function it would be primarily to listen to the inner- 
most ideals and aspirations of adolescence? Of 
course they already exist, such teachers, here and 
there. I do not believe their number can be mul- 
tiplied by some normal school course for their quan- 
tity production. I merely hazard the hope that 
more of this type will be found, and given time for 
that leisure which is so necessary for the friendly 
and reciprocal relationship between maturity and 
youth. Or perhaps each teacher may some day come 
to feel that, like the physician or the man of law, 
it is his privilege and duty to act as a lay-confessor; 
yet not so much for the troublous perplexities of 
young folks as for their highest (and usually most 
wistful and hidden) ambitions and desires. 

When one’s old pupils come back to talk about 
their children, how old and grandparental it makes 
one feel! How one wonders: ‘‘What have I done, 
as a teacher, toward making the home life of Dirk, 


376 WD Ea RU AT B Oey) 


or Bob, or Margaret, happier in relation to mate- 
hood and to children?” For is not that the capital. 
question, after all, if education is to be for growth 
in joy toward happiness in this world of ours? Are 
not other things relatively insignificant except for 
complacent bachelors and the new type of woman 
which feminine freedom has given us, and who pre- 
fers a career to a life? Perhaps in Haldane’s day 
of ectogenic babies, twelve a year; or in some stand- 
ardized scientific Utopia of the future, other view- 
points may be more important. Just now, however, 
children are born to women in the old-fashioned 
way, except that among the more intelligent their 
birth is controlled in accord with circumstances more 
favorable to their development and welfare. So it 
seems to me that even looking forward considerably 
into the future, we teachers may say to ourselves, 
with our friend Angelo Patri: 


“IT look a thousand years ahead and I 
see not men, ships, inventions, buildings, 
poems, but children, shouting, happy chil- 
dren.”’ 


CHAPTER XVIII 
WHAT, THEN, ABOUT GIRLS? 


Knowledge, far from being imposed upon children, 
ought to be treasure which they find in their frolic- 
some search after the wonderful and the beautiful; 
they should seek knowledge on the run, and find it 
with an exulting shout, as they find flowers in the 
woods in spring. 

—SARAH CLEGHORN. 


I 


Tuts book began in the belief that education is 
for joyous mental growth through life. Its theme 
is a teacher’s joy in watching and having a small 
part in the evolution of boy-soul. It is finished in 
a day when those influences of evil which Nicholas 
Murray Butler has dubbed ‘‘the new barbarians,” 
are swarming from their musty caves bent upon set- 
ting their own limits to the growth of children’s 
minds. In Tennessee a fellow teacher of mine is 
hauled into court for stating in prose some of the 
things which the first chapter of Genesis states in 
poetry. My boys at Intervale used to marvel at the 
good guesswork of the bard who described the earth 
as once without form and void, and pictured the 
coming of light out of darkness, and of man from 
the dust of the ground. How epically he preluded 
Carruth’s: 

377 


378 A Ost ce Cah Gl Eau rg Sk PNG 


A fire mist and a planet, 
A crystal and a cell, 
A jelly-fish and a saurian, 
And caves where cave men dwell. 
Then a sense of law and beauty 
And a face turned from the clod; 
Some call it Evolution 


And others call it God. 

My daughter learned this verse when she was 
three years old. New meanings have come into it 
for her month by month and year by year. More 
will be found as she begins her frolicsome search 
after knowledge in astronomy, geology, anthropol- 
ogy and other ologies, all of them facets of one 
mysterious logos, the dream of the scientist, the 
prophet and the philosopher. Already the child is 
amazed to think of nebular universes ten million 
light years away from where she stands. Already 
her mind grows somewhat dizzy when it tries to 
think of an electron whirling around its nucleus 
within an atom at the rate of seven thousand mil- 
lion times in a millionth of a second. 

This very young woman has watched divers sink 
into the sea. She has seen her father sail off into 
the clouds of heaven on a great aluminum bird 
whirring louder than a legion of partridges. She 
has looked at diatoms under a microscope and 
marveled at their symmetry and color. She has 
begun to read in books. She listens to voices a 
thousand miles away over wires, and across the 
mysterious ether. I contemplate her in somewhat 


THE REAL BOY 379 


wistful wonder as she grows upward and outward 
into a world of freedom, opportunity and ad- 
venture such as her grandparents never dreamed, 
and which her parents find it difficult to grasp. 

Her father wishes to walk with her in the fasci- 
nating fields awaiting her search for knowledge on 
the run and her finding it with an exulting shout as 
she now finds flowers in the woods in springtime. 
He knows that the best way to learn and to grow 
is to teach. He would like to be her teacher, and 
the teacher of-her fellow children in the school of 
tomorrow. But he has grown somewhat crassly 
material in his desires, wants books that cost five and 
ten dollars a volume, longs for travel with her 
over the surface of this globe and through the clouds 
that brood over it above our heads, and upon its 
blue-green waters in a boat. He finds that he can- 
not have and do these things upon the wages of a 
teacher. So he thinks about education for his daugh- 
ter, and looks about for the new school for girls, 
as he has dreamed about the school of tomorrow for 
boys. 

What do I want to find for her in school? It 
is something which, as yet, I have not found. It 
does not dwell in those public schools which I have 
visited, not even in Number 45, The Bronx, where 
Angelo Patri has approached the Dalton Plan in his 
courageous efforts to leaven the vast politico-educa- 
tional lump. I fear that when I choose a school 
for my daughter, I shall fall into the class of fathers 


380 HE Ra AYE VB GY 


which Dallas Lore Sharp considers undemocratic, 
if not snobbish. Yet even in such private schools 
as I have been privileged to scan, I have thus far 
failed to find what I want. Many of the schools 
which John Dewey and Miss Evelyn Dewey have 
described as the most progressive have welcomed 
me and I have held interesting converse with some 
of their pupils. Schools in Kansas City, St. Louis, 
Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland, Dayton, Colum- 
bus, Boston and New York have severally shown me 
their educational wares. Most of them impress me 
as mere frosting on our academic cake. I contrast 
them with the rough primitiveness and relative free- 
dom of a possible Intervale and wonder toward 
what intellectual embroidery our educational taste 
is turning. 

Under Miss Cook, at the Francis Parker School 
in Chicago, to be sure, I found an atmosphere of 
democracy and hard-work with considerable lati- 
tude of choice as to what one shall do and how it 
shall be done. The woodsy, handicraft spirit of 
Mr. Vanderlip’s school at Scarborough so hypno- 
tized me that I forgot the words of The Lord’s 
Prayer when I was asked to lead in morning as- 
sembly. “—Two Montessori Schools revealed groups 
of boys and girls all happy at jobs already second 
nature to my daughter. It seemed to me rather 
tragic that children should go to school in order to 
learn how to lace shoes and set tables. Conversa- 
tions with some of Mrs. Johnson’s pupils from Fair- 


EG ae AE TB OnY 381 


hope and Greenwich made me think that a real 
teacher’s dreams can come true in life today. The 
feeling of constructive freedom which came to me 
when wandering among Miss Parkhurst’s little boys 
and girls at the Children’s University School, was 
refreshingly tonic. One does not wonder that the 
Dalton Plan has been so welcome in England and 
in China, and one hopes that its influence will spread 
far and wide through America, too. In the Lincoln 
School of New York City the Dalton Plan seems 
to be mingling happily with Dr. Caldwell’s own 
ideas so that children in that great hive of experi- 
mental industry seem to be absorbing some of the 
very best elements of a dawning synthesis in educa- 
tional methods. 


II 


I took with me, on a trip to Washington, two 
children of the Lincoln School. An almost religious 
antipathy to anything red was amusingly manifest in 
their mental attitude. The fear or hatred of any- 
thing red, or even pink, seemed to have been in- 
culcated with all the precision with which the Cath- 
olic Church indocrinates the fear of God or rever- 
ence for the Pope. No clear perception of what the 
word red means was apparent, but the term seemed 
to cover any ideas, influences or movements contrary 
to the solid status quo of society and industry as 
it 7s in America today. Perhaps my impression is 


wrongly founded. Probably Dr. Caldwell could 


382 THE REAL BOY 


show me that it is erroneous. But I like to meditate 
upon the spontaneous reactions of pupils rather than 
upon the theories or convictions of those who ad- 
minister or teach, and I set down this impression 
merely to illustrate the point of my closing chapter. 

The polar opposite of the attitude of these pupils 
of the Lincoln School is that of the Manumit School, 
at Pawling, New York. Boys and girls are destined 
to graduate from Manumit with diplomas held like 
field-marshal batons, ready to direct battles in the 
struggle between Capital and Labor. Again, this 
is but a personal impression. Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. - 
Finke might persuade me that it is the aim of Manu- 
mit to open children’s minds to the other side of 
what they consider the great class conflict. But I 
have spent hours among their pupils, and it seems 
to me that if my daughter became one of them, she 
would absorb the elements of a radical sociological 
creed. 

‘Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed,”’ 
said Huxley, and if there is one thing I wish my 
daughter to possess in her intellectual life, it is the 
attitude of the true scientist. Perhaps I am a trifle 
antiquated in harking back to Herbert Spencer, but 
it seems to me that only in the empiric viewpoint 
of an Aristotle can one learn to know “how utterly 
beyond not only human knowledge but human con- 
ception is the universal power of which nature, and 
life and thought are manifestations.’’ Perhaps I am 
practically and pragmatically wrong in my intense 


HEHE REAL BOY 383 


desire that my daughter shall keep a wholly open 
mind, even to the point of retaining the viewpoint 
of a Romain Roland in the face of an international 
issue, or, of an Einstein, refusing to sign a manifesto 
of his closest comrades. I am registering, however, 
my present conviction regarding the most important 
element in my daughter’s education for life. I wish 
for her, more than anything else, the attitude or way 
of thinking, of the true scientist, who is also the true 
philosopher and sometimes the true poet as well. 


Ill 


Will she find this way of mental life in school? 
Is there a school which has adopted the cardinal 
principle of Roman Catholic education relative to 
the fixing of a spiritual attitude toward the universe 
and yet dedicated to crystallizing the fundamental 
viewpoint of science. instead of theology? Give to 
such a school the first seven years of a child’s life, 
and the world of creed and prejudice could then be 
free to do its worst. Just as the church, Catholic 
or Protestant, can almost guarantee to close the 
mind hermetically against all possibility of spiritual 
growth beyond the limits of its own dogma, so a 
school might assure a father like myself that in its 
care his child might graduate with the conviction 
that her mind is free to grow to the utmost limit of 
its power. 

I do not mean that I wish my daughter to become 
an evolutionist, for evolution is but a theory, and 


384 THE REAL BOY 


the attitude of the true scientist is as far beyond 
the limits of this theory as the viewpoint of the 
evolutionist is above the conception of original sin 
or eternal damnation. The hypothesis of evolution 
is just now a better intellectual tool than the as- 
sumption of creation at the hands of an anthropo- 
morphic god. But it remains, at best, a tool. I 
want my daughter’to drop this tool just as soon as 
she finds another better suited to her purpose of 
enjoying the fine art of living. I believe that the 
art of living is best manifest in the spirit of service 
to one’s fellow man, and I hope that my daughter 
will be one of those who will help “build the lofty 
structure of human society on the sure and simple 
foundation of man’s organism.”’ I wish for her that 
“open eyed, sensitive observation, not pretending to 
know prematurely, ready to throw away all pre- 
possessions and to follow Nature whithersoever her 
caprices may lead.’’ And I pray that she may find, 
with Havelock Ellis, that this instinctive search 
after the causes of things is a new faith leading 
ever into happier realms of thought and feeling. It 
is joy that I wish for my daughter, and I know no 
higher, more intensive joy than that of the open, 
growing mind. 

And I pray that she be never content with things 
as they are. I want her to be a revolutionist. Her 
ancestors on my mother’s side fought under red 
hats in the French Revolution. Her great-great- 
grandparents on my father’s side fought under what- 


THE REAL BOY 385 


ever hats they could find in the revolution against 
taxation without representation. But she need not 
don a uniform and shoulder a gun! As Edwin 
Slosson says: “Revolutions in science never go back-. 
ward and they differ from political revolutions in 
that nothing worth saving is lost in the transaction. 
The new theory must always include all that the old 
one does and more. No man’s work is proved wrong. 
Revolutions in science do not destroy; they extend.” 

May she always be restless for new horizons, 
like that genial dog in Christopher Morley’s literary 
gem. May she ever be seeking where the blue be- 
gins. Let her follow Loeb, and Carrel and Ein- 
stein. Yet may she carry a Shakespeare in her 
pocket, and read, too, ever and anon in the great 


book where she will be asked: 


Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of 
the earth? 

Who shut up the sea with doors when it brake forth, 
as if it had issued out of the womb? 

When I made the cloud the garment thereof, 

And thick darkness a swaddling band for it, 

And brake up for it my decreed place, 

And set bars and doors, 

And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther: 

And here shall thy proud waves be stayed. 


If she go to school in America at the dawn of 
what Stuart Sherman has ‘called “‘the stadium age”’ 
in education, may she become one of Herbert Spen- 
cer’s good animals. May she learn early the mean- 


TH RIGA TY BOs 


ing of motherhood under the new dispensation of a 
woman’s choice as to the number and time-distribu- 
tion of her children. May she absorb the experi- 
ences of life like a sponge, and react to them with 
the electric delight of a squirrel. May she depend 
more upon platitudes than upon theories of educa- 
tion. Kipling’s. “If,” the book of Ecclesiastes, the 
Rubaiyat and a few of the sayings of Jesus are suf- 
ficient for her spiritual foundation. With F. E. 
Smith, may she see good in all religions, but tie to 
the narrow creed of none; honor true heroes and 
reformers, but worship none; listen to all men and 
women, but accept the opinions of none; learn of all 
men and all women, but follow none; be all things tc 
all men and all women, but maintain her integrity and 
sincerity and freedom of soul. 

And may her education for joyous growth include 
an abounding sense of humor, so that when her little 
boy plays hookey from his school of day-after-to- 
morrow, she will smile with a warm inward delight 
when he reports to her what he had been doing, 
even as that youngster did to Hardwicke Nevin: 


I put my lips to the rose and chewed its leaves; 
I shook a squirrel down, and tore my pants; 
I went in for a swim; and pulled corn sheaves 
To get some silk and smoke it at the ants; 
Then in a tree top very comfortable, 


I hollered to a lady: “Go to Hell!” 


THE END 








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